


Season of the She Wolf

by Vivienne67



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:13:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 50,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivienne67/pseuds/Vivienne67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cullens and wolf packs are at peace, and Leah has begun to feel almost normal. When the half-vampire Nahuel returns and the unthinkable happens, Leah faces life-changing choices and a frightening, evil foe from Nahuel's past. Intended for mature audiences over 18. Rated for sexual content and violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Changes

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfiction I wrote, so the beginning is rough in spots but definitely improves as the story progresses. This story is complete. Beta services were graciously provided by MunkeeRajah and Evelyn-Shaye of Project Team Beta. Of course, Twilight is the property of Stephenie Meyer.

Chapter 1 – Changes

Leah

Froth-flecked beer spewed out of Seth's mouth and nose, across the table and all over my new black silk blouse.

"Holy crap, Jake," Seth screeched. "That is awesome news!"

Beside him, Embry was trying not to laugh at the disgusted expression on my face as I pulled my sopping shirt away from my skin.

"Shit, Seth! When the hell are you going to grow up?" I growled at my brother. Twenty-one or not, if the kid couldn't keep beer in his mouth instead of spraying it all over, he had no business drinking.

Jacob and Embry were openly laughing at me now, and I couldn't really blame them. Seth's good humor was always infectious. Even my foul moods usually couldn't stand up in the face of his good humor.

"Oops! Sorry, Leah," Seth said, grabbing the damp paper napkin from under his beer mug and swabbing at my blouse. It was utterly useless. I slapped his hand away from my chest. The blouse was ruined.

Thanks to Jake's grand announcement–which had prompted Seth's beer-spitting episode–my night out with my pack brothers at our favorite watering hole in Port Angeles was ruined, too. While Seth and Embry were obviously thrilled with the bombshell our Alpha had just dropped, I was struggling to sort out my tangle of emotions.

Jake and Renesmee, his little half-vamp imprint, were getting married.

Seth left off pawing at my shirt and turned back to Jacob. "Seriously, though, man. I am so happy for you guys," he said. "And it will be great to have another Cullen family wedding. They really know how to throw a party."

Jake chuckled at Seth's enthusiasm. "Thanks. Glad you're looking forward to it. Gotta admit, I'm intimidated as hell at the idea of Alice planning everything. We want something small, simple and private, but you know Alice …"

"Jake, don't you think this is a little, well … soon?" The words were out of my mouth before I could snatch them back. Before I'd even really thought about them.

The grin fell away from Jake's face. Three pairs of chocolate brown eyes glared at me from around the table. As usual, I was raining on their parade.

I lowered my voice so that my words wouldn't carry beyond our table–not that anyone would be able to hear us in the crowded, smoke-filled, noisy bar. "I mean, she really is only seven years old, right?"

Jake had been putting up with my bullshit for a long time now. Of course, I wasn't nearly the bitch I'd been all those years ago when Seth and I joined Jake's pack to help defend Bella and her baby against Sam's death sentence. Leaving Sam's pack had freed me from the Sam-Emily-Leah pain-fest that I'd been living through at the time. Jake imprinting on Renesmee had resolved a lot of issues among the packs and their relationship with our resident vampire coven.

Still, after so long, I was beginning to think my personal issues would probably never go away.

Time and mental distance had dulled the pain and eased the betrayal, but to this day, I couldn't manage more than a few minutes in Sam and Emily's gloriously happy presence. I skipped their wedding, of course. When both packs had gathered to celebrate the birth of the next generation of little Uley pups–a daughter five years ago and their son two years later–no power on earth could have made me attend.

Now, seven years after Renesmee's birth had changed everything for all of us, she was about to shake things up again by marrying Jacob. She was barely matured. She'd spent most of her short life hiding her rapid aging from the residents of Forks. Bella and Edward had home-schooled her and the only friends she had were her own vampire family and the wolves in Jake's pack.

Renesmee might be physically mature, but I wasn't convinced of her emotional maturity. I remembered being a young adult, and I sure as hell didn't know what I really wanted from life when I was her age−okay, when I was her physical age. And I'd grown up in a pretty normal environment. From day one, nothing had been normal about Renesmee's life. How was she supposed to know what she wanted now, let alone what she would want in the future? Rushing into marriage with a love-sick Alpha dog sounded to me like the recipe for a lot of regrets later on in life.

"Leah, you know that Ness is an adult," Jake replied, drawing my attention back to our conversation. "She's been an adult for a while now. It's not like I'm robbing the cradle, here. I'm marrying the woman I love, the woman I've always loved."

"How'd you get Edward to agree, though? I gotta think he's not thrilled about this," Embry interjected.

Jake smirked. "Actually, the whole wedding thing was Edward's idea."

"No way!" Seth's mouth fell open so wide I was surprised his jaw didn't smack on the beer-stained wooden table. Embry's eyebrows were climbing into his hairline. I, however, had no trouble believing that Edward would insist Jake marry Renesmee.

"Of course he wants Jake to marry her," I sneered. "You don't think he'd allow Jake into his daughter's panties otherwise, do you?"

Jacob blushed crimson–or about as close as he could come to that shade given his normal coppery complexion. He was probably more angry than embarrassed by my comment. Thanks to the pack's mental connection, we all knew perfectly well that Jake wasn't getting an–had, in fact, never gotten any. From anyone, let alone Edward and Bella's pampered, prized, half-human, half-vampire daughter.

There weren't many secrets in a wolf pack. That was one reason why I spent as little time in wolf form as possible. I hadn't phased in months.

"Not cool, Leah," he growled through clenched teeth. "It's not like I'm being forced into something I don't want to do. I've had no problem waiting for Ness to be ready for an adult relationship. No one else has the right to judge her or her parents for that, either. Least of all someone the Cullens have treated like family–or tried to."

I sighed, leaned back in my chair and took a long pull from my beer mug. The virtual merging of our pack with the Cullens' family had always been a bone of contention between Jake and me. I'd just never been able to accept how easily, quickly and completely Jacob and my pack brothers had given up their hatred of vampires. I mean, hating and fighting vampires was the reason our furry little brotherhood existed at all.

I also couldn't totally let go of my resentment for how the Cullens' presence in Forks had irrevocably changed the course of my life–practically from the moment they'd arrived in town.

If the vampires had never come back here and set up house, Sam would never have phased in the first place. Would never have imprinted on Emily. Would never have left me. He'd still be mine. I'd still be a normal woman, possibly with a few kids by now.

Instead, I was a freak among freaks–the only female werewolf in the history of our tribe and a genetic dead end. Because of the Cullens, I'd lost Sam. There had been no one for me since. Meeting a guy and raising a family was pretty much impossible when you spent part of your time as a huge, shaggy she-wolf, didn't age and no longer had a period.

Yeah, it was hard not to resent the hell out of all of them, but especially Renesmee, who was on the verge of getting everything I'd wanted for myself. And getting it with my best–okay, only–friend.

Jake saw the change in my mood. "Look, guys," he said, turning to Embry and Seth, "I think Leah and I need to talk alone. Alpha-beta stuff, you know? Why don't we catch up tomorrow?"

Embry got the message immediately. "Okay, we'll see you tomorrow, Jake," he said, pulling Seth to his feet and pushing him toward the door.

Jake watched our pack brothers weave their way through the crowded bar to the exit. He touched his forehead in a mock salute when Seth turned to wave just before Embry pulled him out the door. Then he turned back to me with a wary expression.

"Look, I was pretty much expecting you wouldn't be totally cool with this," he said. "I realize this is going to change things for the whole pack–a lot."

I snorted at that understatement. "I want you to be happy as much as anyone, but this decision doesn't just affect you, you know; it affects us all. Why do you have to do this now? Why can't you wait for Renesmee to grow up a little bit more? Jake, she's seen so little of the outside world. Don't you think if she rushes into something this permanent−this big−that she may feel later that she missed out on something?"

Jake sighed and sat back in his seat. I could tell there was more to this. Something he was debating with himself whether or not to reveal right now. "Just spit it out, Jake," I snapped.

It wasn't like Jake to fidget, or to hold anything back from me. We were way beyond that–most of the time. He shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bar chair and then leaned toward me across the table. His voice lowered.

"The Cullens have been here a long time–nearly ten years," he said, his expression intense. I could see the worry hiding behind his eyes. "People have been talking for a while. Carlisle had to switch to a hospital in Port Angeles just to keep practicing medicine. Ness has been hiding for her whole life. Bella put off her own education until Ness was old enough for college. Now they're both ready to go to school. So am I."

He rested his folded arms on the table between us. His dark eyes were intense. "It's time for them to move on."

And here it was, the real bombshell he'd been saving for me.

"When they leave Forks, Renesmee and I are going with them," Jake said, watching my reaction carefully. Well, that was no surprise to me. I'd always known Jake would never allow himself to be separated from Renesmee.

"I've already talked to Seth and Embry about this a while ago," he continued.

Now that was news. A tight knot twisted in the pit of my stomach, and a burning feeling moved up my body. When it reached my throat, I practically choked on my anger. My fists clenched and trembled beneath the table. So Jake had talked about leaving with everyone else in the pack before bringing it up with me, his beta? Why the fuck was I the last to know?

Jake didn't miss my reaction, but he plowed ahead, choosing to ignore my expression for the moment. "Neither one of them has an imprint, so they don't feel any need to stay here. They're going with us. They want to keep the pack, and our extended family, intact."

He gave me a moment to further process that before he continued. "So the only question is−are you coming too?"

It had the ring of an ultimatum–something that Jake should realize wouldn't go over well with me. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him to fuck off, but he held up his hand, silencing me.

"Think about this, Leah," he said. "I mean really think about it. You know I'd be happy to have you with us. You've stood by me through a lot these last few years, and I couldn't have asked for a better beta."

His brows drew down over his deep-set eyes, and I could tell he didn't want to say what was coming next.

"But if the Cullens leave and you stay … Well, when the vampires are gone, things will go back to normal for any of the wolf pack that stays here." He reached out and gently laid his big hand on my arm. I stiffened, resenting his comfortable familiarity when he'd just dropped such a monumental bag of shit in my lap to deal with. "When the vampires are gone, the need for werewolves goes too, right?"

I don't know why I'd never thought of it myself, but I hadn't.

If the vampires were gone, the genetic switch that made us turn into big, shaggy wolves would turn off. We'd all stop phasing and start aging again.

And maybe, just maybe, I could go back to being normal, too.


	2. Waiting in The Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks again to the awesomely insightful folks at Project Team Beta! Things are starting to heat up in this chapter, so just a reminder – this is rated “M” for a reason. Thanks for reading and reviewing.

I was burning, consumed with heat … delicious, sensual heat. Blazing hands roamed feverishly over my sweat-slicked body. Hot breath fanned against the base of my throat. A searing tongue delved lower, licking a slow, scorching line down the curve of my breast, lapping the sweat from my skin. When that tongue of fire lightly flicked my erect nipple, my whole body ignited.

Powerful hands gripped my hips, roughly pulling me into position beneath his searching flesh. I arched my back, spreading my legs as wide as I could. I craved it. Craved him. More than I had ever wanted anything. 

He laughed − a low, velvety sound − and I knew he was about to give me what I was begging for. Hard, heavy and hot, he surged forward, filing me with a single, searing movement. Ecstasy.

Through the swell of visceral, animal pleasure ripping through my body, a single thought crystalized: Nothing ever felt hot to me. My eyes opened and locked on his, inches from my face.

They were bright, blazing red.

That’s when I fell for the leader of the pack … That’s when I fell for the leader of the pack … That’s when I fell for …

I snapped awake.

“What. The. Fuck?” 

Was I cursing my erotic dream, the ringing phone that just interrupted it, or my smart-ass kid brother who had programmed my phone to play the old Shangri-Las tune for Jake’s ringtone? I couldn’t say. I was too dazed and sleep-befuddled, my body still throbbing and tingling from the dream, to make sense of anything at the moment. 

I snatched the phone off the nightstand, and squinted to focus on the glowing orange numbers on the clock. Four a.m.? Guilt. I hadn’t talked to Jake since that night in Port Angeles more than a week ago. But I’d been thinking about what he had said. Really, I had.

“Yeah, boss, wassup?”

“Leah, I need you here immediately.” His voice was shaking on the other end of the line, and I was instantly, totally alert. “I’m at the Cullens’ place. How fast can you get here?”

“I’m at my mom’s in La Push and I need to dress. There won’t be any traffic at this time of morning, so … twenty minutes maybe,” I replied. “Why? What’s wrong? Should I wake Seth and bring him?”

“Let Seth sleep for now. God knows he’s probably not going to be getting much of it in the near future. None of us will. I need you here now. On four feet. It’ll be easier to explain everything if I’m in your head. Phase and get running.” He disconnected the line without another word.

Fuck, I thought again. It had been months since I’d phased. While I didn’t mind spending time in wolf form, the silence in my head had been really nice these past months. And of course, as soon as I phased, Jake–not to mention any of my other pack brothers already in wolf form–was going to have a front-row seat at the sex show playing in my head right now. Because despite my worry over what was going on with Jake, that dream simply refused to let go and get the hell out of my head. Maybe a good dose of night air and a run through the forest would clear my head and chill out my over-heated body.

I scrambled out of bed, shedding my nightgown and now-sopping panties. Grabbing a pair of shorts and an old wife-beater of Seth’s, I quickly strapped the clean clothes to my calf. I slipped quietly out of my room and padded past the door to Seth’s bedroom. His loud snoring rattled the door and I briefly envied my brother his peaceful and profound sleep. In the kitchen, I scribbled a note of explanation for my mom and brother, and was out the door in less than two minutes. 

Our house was pretty isolated on the outskirts of the rez. We didn’t have any close neighbors to be appalled by my bare ass streaking to the tree line ten yards from our back door. From there, it was a straight shot through the forest to the Cullens’ house.

As soon as I hit the cover of the woods, I phased. 

SSW/SSW/SSW

My paws thudded a staccato beat on the forest trail. Around me, the trees and underbrush teemed with nocturnal life and my heightened senses drank it all in–the sound of a raccoon waddling back to its burrow, the earthy and not unpleasant scent of deer droppings in the underbrush, the tiny glowing eyes of the smallest forest creatures as they silently watched me pass. This was the part of wolf life I loved–the sense of connection with the woods and everything in them. Sometimes, it was almost enough to make up for all the costs of being a werewolf. 

Tonight was one of those times. All the other pack members were asleep in human form, save Jake and me. Since I couldn’t hear him either, I assumed Jake must not have phased yet,staying in human form in order to facilitate communication with the vampire members of our strange, extended family. 

While the thoughts of my other pack brothers could still drive me to distraction, I didn’t mind sharing Jake’s thoughts nearly as much as I once had. His head was actually a pretty peaceful place to be these days. The angst that had always burdened him when he thought he was in love with Bella Swan was long gone.

If I had to put a name to Jake’s perpetual state of mind since he imprinted on Renesmee, it would have to be “content.” It seemed like removing all the pain, anger and jealousy from his soul had made room for his Alpha abilities to really bloom. Jake had become a good leader, an Alpha by birth-right rather than by virtue of having phased first, which was Sam’s claim to the role. 

Jake was an Alpha we followed because we chose to, not because we were compelled to. Although he certainly had the ability to force submission from pack members, he’d never once exercised it. And he’d discovered another aspect of his Alpha power–he could, when he wanted to, shield his own thoughts or the thoughts of another pack member from others in the group. He hadn’t shared this information with anyone else but me, but he’d used that ability more than once to shield me from others in the pack when I was going through a particularly rough time. 

And thanks in large part to Jake’s friendship, those bad times were a lot fewer and farther between than they’d been for years. I owed him—big time.

Which is why I’m running through the forest at four a.m. heading to a houseful of leeches when I’d much rather be home in bed, I thought. Unfortunately, that thought led me right back into vivid memories of the dream I’d been having just before Jake’s call woke me.

And of course, he picked that moment to phase and pop into my head, catching a full-color replay of the last few minutes of my sexy dream.

Jesus, Leah! What the fuck? 

Sorry, sorry, sorry! I dodged a fallen tree trunk and catapulted over a small stream. Be there in a few more minutes. Tell me what’s going on. Hoping he’d pretend he hadn’t just caught all that.

Normally Jake wouldn’t let me off so easy–none of them would. But my diversion worked instantly. His mind filled with images and memories of the past few hours, coming at me so quickly I had trouble making sense of them. I traced his projected memory thread back to its beginning.

Nahuel is back? Why?

I vaguely remembered the half-vampire, half-human from six years ago. Standing shoulder to shoulder with my pack brothers and a horde of non-vegetarian vampires, fully expecting a fight to the death with the Volturi, I’d been a little too distracted to really form any impression of the South American faux vamp and his full vampire aunt. 

That’s what we’re about to find out, Jake thought. He’s been in with the doc for a while now. He was pretty torn up when he first showed up. Lost a lot of blood. Carlisle has him on a drip, trying to kick his accelerated healing abilities into over-drive.

I caught an undercurrent of fear in Jake’s thoughts. I didn’t need the pack mind to tell me why Nahuel’s injuries rattled him. If a hundred-fifty-year-old half vampire could get hurt, it meant Jake’s barely matured imprint was vulnerable to injury too—something no one had ever been sure of before. Renesmee’s durability was somewhere above a werewolf’s but still less than a full vampire. No one had ever tested her limits, though, so she had no clue what those limits were. Now, Jake was getting an idea, albeit second-hand, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Where’s his aunt? Huilen, was it? I broke through the line of trees surrounding the Cullens’ secluded mansion and crossed their broad lawn in half a dozen bounds, skidding to a stop in front of Jake. He was waiting for me by the front steps. Every window in the huge house was lit up, and light spilled from the open front door onto his bronze-tipped fur. 

Another question to ask him. Jake turned his eyes toward the door just as Renesmee appeared there, carrying his cut-offs in her hands. She sprang lightly down the steps and went straight to him, resting her tiny hand on his huge shoulder. Her coppery hair tumbled in waves down her back. She wore a simple pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. She took after her mother when it came to her taste in fashion. 

She looks like a freaking supermodel without even trying. Jake ignored my errant thought, turning his head to gently lay his huge forehead against hers. I felt a twinge of envy. I’d never seen a couple who appeared more at peace–or in tune–with each other. Who wouldn’t feel at least a little bit envious?

After a moment of wordless communication with Jake, Renesmee turned her chocolate brown gaze on me.

“Hello, Leah,” she said. “Thanks for coming so quickly.” She turned back to Jacob. “Grandfather says Nahuel is stable enough to talk with us. Uncle Em and Dad are bringing him down to the living room. He started healing very quickly once he got some blood into his system. Grandfather thinks he’ll feel a hundred percent better within the hour.” 

Renesmee glanced at me uncomfortably. Even knowing that the blood going into Nahuel’s system was from Carlisle’s stash of donated blood, I couldn’t quite hide my shudder of disgust at the thought of anyone ingesting human blood. Jake rolled his huge black eyes. 

IV drip, he reminded me. Oh yeah. That was just so much better.

“Jake, Dad thinks it would be best if you phase to human form and join us in the house,” Renesmee continued. “Leah should be able to hear everything from out here.” 

I knew what she wasn’t saying. Her suggestion that I remain in wolf form was for my benefit. All the Cullens knew I’d never be comfortable sitting in their house, like I was visiting for afternoon tea. I’d feel more secure if I was outside in wolf form. It was still weird after all these years how accepting and accommodating they were of my hang ups. At lot more accepting than some of my pack brothers were … 

Jake pondered for half a second. That’s actually not a bad idea, Leah. We don’t know for sure that Nahuel is alone or not being followed. I’d feel a lot better knowing you’re out here on patrol. You can run the perimeter and still hear what’s going on in the house. If you have anything to add, Edward can translate for you.

I wasn’t crazy about letting Jake walk in the house alone, in human form, with an unknown vampire-type in there. What if Nahuel found Jacob’s blood as enticing as Renesmee did? She still bit him from time to time … whenever they were getting hot and heavy. 

Jake growled at that last stray thought. Of course he knew I was aware of those times, but he’d really rather I try not to think about them … especially not when we were in the middle of a tense situation.

Not sorry this time, Jake, I thought back. Renesmee’s not venomous so it’s no biggie when she noshes on you and what you two crazy kids do in your private time is NOT something I care to speculate on. But Nahuel IS venomous, and that means he’s dangerous to you. Even if you are the big, bad Alpha dog.

Jake rolled his eyes at me again and just waited. I relented. OK, you win. I might give in but damned if I’d admit he was right. I’ll run patrol at the edge of hearing range.

He huffed once in agreement for Renesmee’s benefit, before I spun on my heels and sprang toward the forest line. Behind me, I felt the surge of energy that meant Jake was phasing. I heard the rustling of clothes as he pulled on his cutoffs—Jake had no modesty around Renesmee these days.

Something was going on, that was for sure. Forks was hell and gone from South America, where Nahuel lived. He’d come a long way, in bad shape, to find the Cullens.

What the hell was up with him? And whatever it was, why was he here, dragging the Cullens—and my Alpha—into it?


	3. Sorrow

Jacob POV

I watched Leah spring into the tree-line, her disapproval echoing in my head. I didn’t waste time trying to pin down exactly what had her bloomers in a bunch. Besides being dragged out of a sexy dream at four a.m., that is. It was always something with Leah. Most of the time, it was better just to let her work things out on her own.

I needed to ignore her current snit and find my center of calm before I faced whatever crisis Nahuel had brought with him. Closing my eyes, I pulled my energy back into my core, shedding the extra bulk, fur and fangs of my wolf form in favor of the human shape that would allow me to sit comfortably in the Cullens’ living room. Sure Esme loved me, but she’d still kick my ass if I left werewolf fur all over her furniture. The thought made me smirk.

I opened my eyes and reached toward Nessie for my cutoffs, not turning to her fully until I’d finished zipping up. 

She was giving me that look, the one that made me feel like a slab of prime rib on the plate of a frat boy who’d been living off cold morning-after pizza and fast food burgers for an entire semester. I groaned.

“Not now. Do not give me that look now, when I’m about to walk into your grandparents’ house and sit beside you and your parents and talk about God only knows what kind of life-and-death disaster with a vampire who would probably just love to get you into the sack,” I pleaded. She flashed me a huge, toothy grin, and then sprang into my arms.

“It’s your own fault, you know,” she whispered in my ear. Her hot breath sent shivers through my abdomen, shivers that turned into heat as they moved south on my body. Her arms were locked around my neck, her legs around my waist. She began kissing her way from my neck up my jawline, heading for my mouth. “You keep phasing in front of me and dropping trou whenever you feel like it,” she muttered between kisses. “How’s a girl supposed to keep her thoughts pure with all that muscled manliness on such blatant display?”

I rolled my eyes. She had such a screwed-up view of me as this sex god. It would have been funny—if it didn’t make my whole body ache knowing she wanted me so much.

“Bella’s going to drop the shields she has on both of us so we can communicate with Edward if we need to,” I reminded her, crushing her to me. I loved how her warm, luscious body, that looked so small and fragile, easily endured my werewolf strength. “The last thing we need is your father going for my throat—or my balls—because my mind is on how your boobies look in that t-shirt.”

Using a twelve-year-old’s term for her tits broke the sexual tension between us, for now, and she laughed against my lips. Reluctantly, I set her back on her feet, pulled her arms from around my neck and gently pushed her back a step.

“Give him some credit, Jake,” Nessie chided. “He’s been really cool about us, much cooler than I ever expected he would be.”

“I know,” I replied, catching her hand and pulling her toward the stairs leading up to the front door. “I’m just stressed. I can’t think of a good reason for Nahuel to be here. The dude is obviously in trouble, but I can’t help the way I feel … I really wish he hadn’t come here. I just have this feeling that whatever it is he wants from us isn’t going to be easy to give … or over anytime soon.”

She said nothing, only giving my hand a gentle squeeze and walking in front of me up the steps. I tried very hard not to stare at her ass as she went in the door.

SSW/SSW/SSW

The Cullens were arranged throughout the huge living room like a paranormal still life, waiting in perfect silence and stillness for Edward, Emmett and Carlisle to bring Nahuel downstairs. The hush in the room was so palpable it almost felt like a sixth presence.

Alice sat in the far corner near the kitchen, probably hoping the physical distance from Nessie and me would allow her to see more clearly than if we were close by, blocking her visions. For now, Jasper hovered near her, but I was sure he’d move closer to Nahuel when our guest made his appearance in the living room. 

Esme had arranged the furniture in the room to create a cozy, intimate seating area with plush leather sofas and four huge armchairs. She occupied one of the armchairs, and Rosalie sat quietly in another. For once, she didn’t greet me with an insult. Christ, everyone was stressing, even Blondie.

Bella was sitting on one of the sofas and looked up with a welcoming smile when we entered the room. She scooted to the middle of the couch, patting the cushions on either side of her in invitation. Nessie dropped down on Bella’s left, slipping her arm around her mother’s waist in a quick hug. I took a seat on Bella’s right.

“Hey, Bells,” I murmured just low enough for her to hear. It didn’t feel right to break the tense silence in the room just yet.

“Hey, Jake,” she replied. “Everything okay? Edward and Em are bringing Nahuel down now.” I didn’t miss the undertone of warning in that simple statement. Keep your head in the game and out of Nessie’s drawers, Jake. No shields, now. You’re an open book. Focus, focus, focus.

“We’re cool,” I told her. “Leah’s out running the perimeter, so we’ll know if anything comes near the house. I’ll get Seth out here to take over in a couple of hours, after he’s had time to wake up.” Satisfied, Bella nodded and turned her gaze to the steps leading up to the second story.

I greeted Alice across the room. “Hey, pixie! You getting anything?” 

She grimaced and shook her head. “I can’t see anything, no matter how hard I look. It’s just like with you and Nessie. I can’t see past Nahuel.”

A new scent drifted down the stairs, preceding its owner. I shook my head slightly, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that a heartbeat other than mine and Nessie’s was in the room. I was used to hearing just ours whenever the whole family was together. This third drumming beat didn’t fit. It didn’t feel right for that sound to be here, in this house.

Emmett and Edward descended the stairs with Nahuel between them and Carlisle behind. Nahuel looked like fifty miles of bad road, even after getting the doc’s treatment, some donated blood and a fresh set of clothes borrowed from Jasper. He looked like he could use the support Edward and Emmett were giving him, but I knew their hands under his arms weren’t there just to keep him on his feet. 

Emmett guided Nahuel to the chair farthest from Alice and stood beside it as Nahuel dropped limply onto the seat. Jasper crossed the room to take up a position next to Emmett. Neither was being subtle about their positioning as guards. Carlisle moved to stand behind Esme while Edward parked on the arm of the couch beside Nessie. Without a word, he bent over and pressed a kiss on top of her head and gently ruffled her curls.

I wondered how much he’d been able to get from Nahuel’s mind already. Did he have details?

Edward casually turned his face away from me, then back—a subtle shake of the head. That was interesting. I’d have thought by now Edward would know pretty much everything Nahuel had to say. Was he blocking Edward somehow? Edward briefly raised his eyes to the ceiling before meeting my gaze again. Yes. 

Carlisle broke into my chain of thought, addressing our uninvited guest. “Nahuel, I trust you’re feeling better?” It wasn’t really a question. The doc wouldn’t have allowed this pow-wow to occur if he didn’t think his patient was up to it.

“Yes, Dr. Cullen. Thank you for your care and your family’s hospitality.”

Like Leah, I didn’t really remember that much about Nahuel from six years ago. I remembered being very grateful he had showed up to help us convince the Volturi to leave Nessie alone. I’d been even more grateful when he’d left. I hadn’t liked the way he’d watched Nessie as if she was some bright, shiny trinket he couldn’t wait to slip into his pocket. Luckily for him, he wasn’t looking at her at all right now. Guess he had more on his mind …

“We are pleased to help you,” Carlisle continued, always the spokesperson of the family. “I know I speak for us all when I say we feel indebted to you for your assistance with the Volturi. Can you tell us what happened to bring you to our home in such dire condition?”

Nahuel sank back into the armchair. His eyes, the color of polished teak, darted nervously around the room. He seemed to be weighing his words carefully.

“It was my pleasure to help you and your coven,” he said. Carlisle’s golden eyes widened minutely. His reaction was so subtle only someone who knew him well would catch it. He didn’t like the word “coven” being applied to his family. “Now, it is my fervent hope that you will be able to assist me,” Nahuel continued.

“Of course, we would like to help you,” Jasper interjected in his smooth Texas drawl. “But it would be helpful to us if we first understood the nature of your problem.”

Nahuel seemed to realize that Jasper hadn’t really committed us to any action. He glanced around the room again and then nodded once, as if he’d come to some private decision.

“Huilen is dead,” he said, his voice strained. The poor bastard looked like he was barely holding it together. Esme gasped and seemed about to stand. Carlisle’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“We are truly saddened to hear that,” the doc said. “What happened?”

“She died at the hands of my sire, Joham,” Nahuel replied. “You may recall that he fancies himself something of a scientist, creating a master race. Apparently, he has decided it is time to advance his experiments.”

He leaned slightly forward in his chair. He looked like hell—tired, depressed and weak. I’d never seen an immortal look so bad. Okay, maybe just one other time … an image of Edward, eyes hollow and burning, hovering over a hugely pregnant Bella, popped into my head. Edward’s eyes flashed to me and narrowed slightly. Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to go there. 

“He came for us in our home in the mountains,” Nahuel continued. “It did not matter to him that I had already told him I wasn’t interested in his experiments. Since I am the only male he has managed to sire in nearly two hundred years, apparently I am central to his … master plan.”

“So what … he tried to use your aunt to force you to do what he wanted?” Emmett asked.

Nahuel swallowed hard, and then bent forward at the waist, dropping his head into his hands. His long fingers clawed at his hair. “No,” he whispered. “Joham never even bothered to try to use her as leverage against me. He simply destroyed her in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything to save her.” A shudder wracked his body.

That was enough for Esme. In a flash, she was out of her chair and kneeling by Nahuel, one arm wrapped around his shoulders. As she gently stroked his hair, I was startled to realize it was short. What had happened to that long braid he was sporting six years ago?

No one spoke for a few minutes, waiting for Nahuel to pull himself together. When he straightened and gave Esme a weak smile, Jasper spoke again. “We don’t understand. How was it that you were unable to help Huilen?”

“Joham has an … ability,” Nahuel said, spitting the word as if it left a bad taste on his tongue. He looked at Edward. “He has a special talent, just as members of your coven have talents. He can paralyze a victim with his thoughts alone. That is how he slew Huilen, by paralyzing us both and then tearing her apart.”

Esme made a choking sound. The rest of us were silent, digesting this bombshell. 

“He also has help,” Nahuel said, again addressing Jasper. “He has created an army for himself of half-vampires and full-vampire newborns. It’s a small army, to be sure; but then, it doesn’t need to be large to get him what he wants.”

While Nahuel told his story, Edward had kept silent. I knew he was trying to get some peep into Nahuel’s head, apparently without success. His frustration crept into his voice. “And what does Joham want?” he growled.

“Me,” Nahuel said. Then he looked at Nessie. “And your daughter.” 

Every vampire in the room hissed in unison. Bella and Edward moved in tandem, putting their bodies between Renesmee and Nahuel.

“Wait. How does he even know Ness exists?” Emmett demanded.

Nahuel’s eyes were agonized. “My aunt loved me very much,” he choked out. “Before she died, she tried to bargain with my sire, never realizing it was my freedom that was at risk, not my life. I’m afraid she told him much about your coven before he ended her existence.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I am so sorry for her betrayal of your trust.”

“But how did you get away from him …” Jasper began. The sound of the front door slamming open stopped him short.

The door bounced against the wall hard enough to shatter the glass in it. Leah stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed, fists clenched, chest heaving against her ripped and torn wife-beater. She looked like she was ready to break something, or someone.

Great. We’re in for it now. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Edward move his head minutely, nodding in agreement.

“So you came running here?” Leah snarled, taking a single step into the room. “You’ve exposed Jacob and Renesmee, the Cullens, our pack—all of us—to this psycho! You lousy coward …”

Everyone was looking at her now. She radiated fury. It rolled off her in waves like the heat ripple off a road baking in the summer sun. In the next instant, a surge of calm washed through the room, and I knew Jasper was reacting to Leah’s anger, trying to defuse her before she really blew. 

Big mistake. Knowing Leah, having her emotions manipulated would only piss her off more. Moving quickly, I rose from the couch and took a step toward her … and stopped short when I saw the expression on her face change. She didn’t look calm, despite Jasper’s efforts, but she no longer looked enraged, either.

From one heartbeat to the next, her eyes, her face, her whole body altered. Her lips parted slightly as if she was about to gasp, but couldn’t. Her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, staring and almost glazed. Her hands, no longer fisted, hung limply at her sides. Her fingers twitched slightly as if she was having trouble controlling them. 

She looks like she swallowed a fucking toad! Why is she staring at me like that? 

Wait. Not at me. She was staring at something—or someone—behind me. 

Turning my head slightly, I followed her gaze over my shoulder. Her eyes were locked on Nahuel, and he was totally staring back. 

He looked almost as gob-smacked as she did. I whipped my eyes back to Leah.

Oh. Fuck. Me! 

I could practically hear each filament that bound Leah to her life, to all that she was, separate one after the other with a snap, like the far-off report of fire crackers on the Fourth of July. Pack, Seth, Sue … me … Ping! Twang! Ping! 

When she gasped, trying to gulp in a huge lungful of air, I knew she was struggling to breathe around the invisible, terrifying cable now clamped to the center of her chest. I watched the realization slam into her brain at warp speed: This unbreakable cable bound her to something totally unknown and alien. 

My gut clenched; I knew exactly what she was feeling in that moment. 

I wished I could be happy for her. Instead, all I could think was how, when she finally surfaced from the life-altering chaos of this moment, Leah was going to resent the hell out of having her choices taken away from her. Again.

All of this took exactly five seconds. In the sixth second since Leah burst through the door, she disappeared right back out of it, leaving it open behind her. Everyone in the room stared after her in confusion.

Everyone except for me … and Edward. 

I locked eyes with my future father-in-law, desperately needing someone to share my understanding of this moment. She is sooo fucked. 

“Completely,” he agreed.


	4. No Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This one’s a bit longer. I had a lot of ground to cover. Leah’s got a lot on her mind these days. Thanks again to all at Project Team Beta, especially Evelyn and MunkeeRajah, who beta’d this chapter.
> 
> Stephanie Meyer owns Twilight. I own an over-active imagination and a little too much free time on my hands.

Chapter 4 – No Control

Leah POV

I ran the whole way back from the Cullens’ house on two feet. In wolf form, the trip took ten minutes. As a human, it took more than an hour, even running flat-out as fast as I could. But I couldn’t phase. 

There was a small chance Jake didn’t know yet why I’d run out. I needed to get my own mind wrapped around what had just happened before I could talk to anyone else about it, even Jake.

I walked into the house to find Mom at the kitchen sink, shoving scraps into the garbage disposal. Seth sat at the breakfast table, working through half a hog’s worth of bacon and an Everest-sized mound of scrambled eggs. They both looked up at me, stunned. I was covered in dirt and sweat. 

I must have looked as bad as I felt because Seth jumped to his feet. He rounded the table in two strides and grabbed my arm as if he thought I was going to fall over. “Oh my God, Leah! What happened to you? Jake called to say you were on your way home, but that was over an hour ago, and he didn’t want to say anything more on the phone. Where were you?”

I shook him off and gave him a quick elbow to the gut to get him to back away. I so did not want to be touched right now. 

“Nahuel’s back,” I said, relieved when my voice didn’t shake or catch on that name. “Jake’s going to need everyone to run extra patrols. There’s a shit storm on the way. Maybe you should head over to the leeches’ nest. I’m sure Jake’s still there. He can fill you in.”

I pushed him out of my way and risked a quick glance at my mom. Hands on hips, squinting like she was trying to read a pill bottle without her glasses—no, she was not fooled. She always knew when I was hiding something. I needed to be alone. I needed them both out of the house, but how to get rid of them? Today was Saturday, so neither of them had to work. 

“Leah, what are you hiding?” Mom demanded. “Why can’t you tell Seth what’s going on?” 

I snapped at her, trying to sound like the normal, bitchy old Leah they expected me to be. “I don’t have time for this. Neither do you. Don’t you have a date with Charlie? If you blow him off one more time, you can kiss that relationship good-bye, don’t you think?”

She flinched. Things hadn’t been going that great lately between Mom and Bella’s chief-of-police father. Because of Seth and me, she had to hide too much of her life from Charlie and he knew it. It was putting a major strain on their relationship. Personally, I thought Mom should dump his self-deluding ass. After six years, he still didn’t want to know the truth about his own family and stubbornly turned a blind eye to all the weird stuff that went on around him. This afternoon’s fishing trip was supposed to help Mom and Charlie “recapture the romance.” Of course, only Charlie Swan would associate fishing with romance.

Relieved that my diversion worked, but still feeling like shit for playing hardball with my mom, I spun on my heel and headed down the hall. “Seth, get your ass over to the Cullens’ house and talk to Jake,” I ordered over my shoulder. “I’m going to take a shower.”

The shaking and sobbing didn’t start until I was alone under the spray.

Scalding water hammered my body as I stood staring at my feet, my forehead and palms pressed hard against the slick shower wall. Slowly, I pushed away from the tile, then swiftly smacked my forehead back against the wall. Push back, smack. Push back, smack. I fell into a comforting, self-abusing rhythm.

If I hit my head long enough and hard enough, maybe I could bash the image of those questioning, teak-toned eyes right out of my mind.

It didn’t take long to exhaust our antique water heater. I didn’t care. I continued to stand under the cold spray, my head pressed to the wall. I watched the beads of water beat the forest’s black soil from my toes and carry it down the drain.

If only I could wash away the past few hours of my life as easily as that dirt. 

SSW/SSW/SSW

By the time I’d pulled myself back together and put on some clothes more than an hour after arriving home, the house was quiet. My head, however, was not.

For everyone else in both packs, imprinting had been an explosion of bliss and completion. Jake, Quil, even Sam, were utterly, nauseatingly in love with their imprints from the moment that damned psychic cable latched on to the center of their chests. So why was this so hard for me?

I knew the answer. Nothing was ever easy for me. 

My imprint wasn’t someone else from my tribe with whom I could share common ground and experiences. Even Jake and Quil, imprinting on infants, drew a better hand than I’d been dealt. Their imprints had been clean slates with no histories or regrets of their own. The only thing I knew for sure about Nahuel was that he’d already lived the equivalent of two human lifetimes. I knew nothing about how his century and a half of experiences had shaped him as a person.

I had only a vague idea of where he was from, and none whatsoever of how he’d spent the first hundred or so years of his life. I didn’t know how he lived, if he’d killed people for their blood or lived a “vegetarian” lifestyle like the Cullens. Had he ever had a job? Seen the world? Eaten a cheeseburger? Been in love? 

Hell, I couldn’t even picture what he really looked like. Whenever I tried to envision his face, all I could see were blazing, honey-brown eyes. Those eyes … just thinking about them was enough to make my heart race, and blood pool and tingle in body parts that I hadn’t thought about very much in the past six years. My head and heart might be afraid of Nahuel, but my body definitely was not. 

I headed for the kitchen, hoping the human Hoover hadn’t sucked down every last bit of bacon. Not that I had any appetite, but I knew my body needed nourishment to help deal with the emotional turmoil I was going through. If I chewed a hundred times and swallowed quickly, maybe the bacon would actually make it past the bowling-ball sized knot hovering between my throat and my stomach.

I stepped into the kitchen to find that, although Seth and Mom were gone, I was not alone. 

Jake sat at our kitchen table with a cup of joe and a bakery bag from my favorite coffee shop in front of him. He’d added a black T-shirt and running shoes to the cut-offs he’d been wearing earlier.

He gazed at me wordlessly, his eyes soft and dark, sweet and comforting. Like a fucking Hostess cupcake.

Shakes chased each other up my arms and down my legs. When the tremors reached my knees, they sucked all the strength out of the damn things. I staggered two steps to the table and flopped down in the chair across from Jake.

He knows. Shit! Of course he knows …

“Who else knows?” I snarled, gripping the edge of the table. I wasn’t sure what I would do with my hands if I let go—hug him or strangle him. I couldn’t risk doing either.

He studied me for a few moments with those damned puppy dog eyes. Then, he leaned forward and pushed the coffee toward me. He produced a grapefruit-sized chocolate chip muffin from the bag and placed it in front of me.

“Just me …” he said. Well, thank heaven for small favors. “… and Edward.”

I am SUCH a moron. Of course the mind-reader would know I’d imprinted. After all, he’d had a ring-side seat for the big event, hadn’t he? “Will he keep his mouth shut?” 

Annoyance slipped into Jake’s expression. “You know, he doesn’t want to be a psychic peeping Tom. He really does his best to respect people’s privacy.” Never thought I’d live to see the day when Jake would defend his former rival. But then, I’d also never thought I’d live to see any day like this one.

Jake’s anger was fleeting. Suddenly, he was gentle again. “Leah, what are you going to do?” He sounded as if he thought I actually had some say in what was going to happen to my life now.

I sighed and reached for the coffee, popped off the lid and took a long pull of the scorching liquid. “Damned if I know,” I replied. “What can I do? Do I have any choices left anymore?”

“There are always choices in life,” Jake said. “Even when there aren’t any choices that you think you can live with.” Just what I needed—Jake going “Yoda” on me.

“But there has to be a reason this happened,” he continued, reaching across the table to grab my hand. On any other day, I’d have slapped him away. I guess it speaks to how shaky I was that I allowed him to hold my hand. “Have you considered that maybe this is a good thing?”

I pulled my hand out of his and gripped the table edge again, because now I was sure: if I let go, I was going to choke the life out of him. “No, Jake. This may totally surprise you, but I’m really having a hard time finding the silver lining in having my entire life turned upside-down by an uncontrollable biological imperative. Again.”

Jake’s lips pressed into a firm line. He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then barked one word: “Sam.”

Startled, I blinked rapidly for ten seconds. “Huh?” I replied eloquently. “What the hell does Sam have to do with this?”

He grinned widely. “Exactly. Think about Sam. What do you feel?”

I considered his command. How did I feel? Confused, cornered, frustrated, frightened … about my situation, about him. But about Sam? I was shocked to discover I really didn’t feel anything at all. 

For years, I’d carried around a hard lump of anger, resentment and betrayal. It had festered in the hole where my heart had been, slowly poisoning my whole system. In time, I’d learned to cope with the debilitating effects of my self-poisoning anger. I wasn’t well, wasn’t a full person anymore, but at least I wasn’t crippled, either. 

Now, like a boil that had finally been drained, the lump had deflated, leaving no wound in its place. Stunned, I realized I felt whole for the first time in years. Scared shitless, yes, but whole.

Damned if I was going to give Jake the satisfaction of admitting my Sam problem seemed to be cured. Because right now all I could think was that the “cure” was, in its own way, just as bad as the problem had been. 

“You know it doesn’t even make sense for me to imprint. I mean, what’s the point?”

Confusion replaced his smug self-satisfaction. “I’m not following you.”

“The whole point of imprinting is the genetic preservation of the species, right?”

“That’s Sam and Carlisle’s theory,” he agreed.

“Okay, if that’s the case, then what good does it do to have a genetic dead-end, a woman who’s not capable of having little wolf-gene-carrying babies, imprint?” I demanded. “Not to mention, having her imprint on a man whose DNA is so totally different from hers that they probably couldn’t procreate even if the woman’s plumbing actually did work? Carlisle tested me, remember?” 

The gentle look was back in his eyes and I had to bite my tongue not to start bawling again. It really is Armageddon of biblical proportions. Jake gets all sweet and sappy on me, and I fall apart. Mental gag!

“Carlisle’s tests could be wrong,” he said. “Maybe your … plumbing … hasn’t worked because it hasn’t needed to. Maybe this is a second chance to get something you thought you couldn’t have.” His words conjured up another conversation, one from six years ago, about plumbing, imprinting and wanting most what you knew you could never have.

I scrubbed hard at my eyes. I suddenly felt like I needed to go back to bed and sleep for about sixty years. “I don’t know,” I conceded. “And I just can’t think about it now. We can’t think about it right now. Joham is coming here, isn’t he?”

He sighed, stood up from the table and began pacing, his long legs eating up the tiny kitchen’s scarce floor space in just a few strides.

“Yeah, that seems the most probable course of action for him,” Jake said, snapping into Alpha mode. “He wants Ness and Nahuel for his breeding program, and they’re here. So he’ll be here too, eventually. I sent Seth to run guard duty around the house. He, Jasper and Emmett will keep things locked down until we can set up a patrol schedule with our pack and Sam’s guys.” 

I worked on my coffee and muffin while Jake paced the kitchen and filled me in on what I’d missed after fleeing the Cullens’ house like a tail-stomped cat. Nahuel had supplied more details, including how he’d escaped from Joham. That part of the story bothered me, because it required us to believe that one of his half-sisters had taken pity on him and helped him get away when Joham was off hunting in a neighboring village. Jake seemed to buy it, however.

One thing was clear from Nahuel’s tale: Joham had no regard at all for human life. He envisioned himself as the father of a master race. The human women he’d impregnated were nothing more than cattle to him, their half-breed children just a means to an end. He didn’t have much regard for other vampires either it seemed, since he’d killed Huilen without hesitation.

I remembered how I’d felt when my dad died. Lost and alone, orphaned even though I still had my mother. How much worse must it be for Nahuel? He’d witnessed the brutal murder of the only parent he’d ever known. No wonder he was a mess. I felt guilty for calling him a coward. 

“After Nahuel calmed down, Edward was able to read him,” Jake said. “Seems that he wasn’t intentionally blocking Edward. He was just so rattled that he was thinking in his mother’s native language, which is, apparently, one of the few Edward actually doesn’t know. Between the unknown language and the chaos in Nahuel’s mind, Edward was having trouble reading him.”

Of course, Carlisle and Jake had committed the Cullens and our wolf pack to protecting Nahuel and Renesmee from Joham. Jake had talked to Sam already, and Sam had pledged his pack’s help and protection, too. Everyone seemed confident Joham would come to Forks, and I had to agree. Unfortunately, Alice’s inability to see around half-vamps like Nahuel, and any of his sisters who might be working with Joham, was severely hindering our ability to plan for his arrival.

“If Alice can find a big enough blank spot in her visions, then that’s most likely when Joham’s army will arrive,” Jake said. “She won’t be able to see how many are coming, or what their plans are, but at least she might be able to figure out when to expect them.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed. The morning’s shock was beginning to settle into a comfortable numbness. I wasn’t great, but at least I felt more functional. Until Jake threw his next thunder bolt.

“We need to hide Nahuel somewhere while we wait,” he said. He paused for a moment, studying me. I still sat at the kitchen table, while Jake leaned against the counter, arms folded over his massive chest. “I want to hide him here, on the res.”

They say the blood drains out of your head just before it explodes.

“This is the safest way for everyone,” Jake hurried to explain, seeing my stunned expression. “There are more than enough of us here to protect him, and it keeps him separated from Nessie. It would be stupid to make it easy for Joham by having both of them in the same spot. I’ll be staying with the Cullens and Ness until this is resolved, and Sam and Emily have the kids, so they’re out of the question …”

“Bring him here.” 

What? ‘Bring him here?’ Did I say that? Out loud?

“Are you sure, Leah?” Jake sounded as stunned as I felt. 

Yeah, I guess that did come out aloud.

“That would be the best solution, to have him right here where you and Seth can keep an eye on him,” he continued. “And he would blend in better here than in Forks, even if we did have somewhere there to stash him.”

The thought of having him in my home made my gut twist into knots. The only thing worse than having him in my face twenty-four-seven would be not seeing him at all. Not knowing if he was safe or afraid or alone …

I moaned when I realized the direction my thoughts were taking, and dropped my head onto the table.

“Forget it,” Jake said instantly. “I’ll think of something else.”

I lifted my head and pinned him with a glare. “No,” I growled. “If he’s going to have to hide, then I need it to be here.” 

Jake thought about it for a moment more, drumming his meaty fingers on the countertop. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “I’ll bring him tonight, after you’ve had some time to tell Seth and Sue that he’ll be staying here.” 

He strode toward the front door and I dragged myself out of the chair to follow him. At the door, he paused with his hand on the knob, looking down at his feet. “Are you going to tell them? I mean, about … imprinting?” 

I didn’t even have to think about my answer. “No. I need time to figure this out on my own, and I won’t be able to do that with my family poking their noses into this. Can you shield me from the pack? I can’t deal with them right now either.” 

He nodded. “No problem. It’s going to be okay, Leah,” he said, still not looking at me. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

I blew a weary breath through my teeth. “Yeah, well, I hope you’re right.” 

Then, because I needed to ask, and no one else but Jake would have any idea of the answer … “Do you think he knows?”

Jake lifted his eyes to meet mine. He didn’t need to ask what I meant. 

“Ness did,” he said, “before she was even born. So, yeah, I think he probably knows.”

He opened the door and stepped out onto our rickety front porch. “He just may not realize what he knows. Not yet.”


	5. Nothing to be Desired

Chapter 5 – Nothing to be Desired

Leah POV

My plan to hide my imprinting from Mom died a quick but painful death.

After Jake left, I did wind up going back to bed. I figured I deserved a good cry and some depression napping, totally girly indulgences I that rarely allowed myself. Like most things in my life, however, I didn’t have the patience for an extended pity party. 

I was back up again in a few hours, with nothing to do but pace the house, worry and agonize over what I was going to say to my mom and Seth when they got home. Oh, and try not to think about who would be arriving on our doorstep later in the day. 

I knew I would have to deal with my imprint sooner or later. I was hoping for later—much later. I’m not a multi-tasker, and I figured I needed to focus on one worrisome confrontation at a time or my brain would melt.

Normally, when I’m trying to turn off my tendency toward self-demoralizing introspection, I work out. But I didn’t want to leave the house and risk missing my family’s return. So I opted for some extreme house-cleaning instead. After all, we were expecting an extended-stay guest shortly. 

I had just finished cleaning behind all the appliances and was pushing the refrigerator back into place when Mom walked in the door. 

“Leah, what are you doing?” she asked, looking like she’d just discovered a tribe of wolf-riding elves in her kitchen. Really, I didn’t know why she sounded so bewildered. I was a notorious neat freak. 

“Cleaning,” I grunted, giving the ancient dented Frigidaire a final hip-thrust into place.

Mom looked around the kitchen, which, I was proud to say, looked better than it had it years. Every appliance gleamed—as much as possible considering their advanced ages—and every surface was so clean you could eat off the one of your choice. 

The look on her face told me I’d just seriously jeopardized my whole “hide the imprinting” plan. She knew I resorted to physical activity whenever I was trying to avoid thinking about something. 

“All right, enough,” she said, tossing her purse and keys on the kitchen table. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at me. “I want you to tell me what’s going on. Right now. What happened at the Cullens’ house this morning?”

I scrubbed my forearm across my brow, wiping away sweat before it ran into my eyes. “I told you what happened, Mom. Nahuel is back and in trouble. The pack and the vamps are all on alert right now.” Hoping my voice wouldn’t quaver too much, I quickly sketched in the details of Nahuel’s confrontation with his sire, the murder of his aunt, and his escape and subsequent arrival in Forks.

“Yeah, I know all that,” she said, rounding the table to stand in front of me. “Seth called my cell after he talked with Jacob.” My mother was much shorter than me, and had to bend her neck backward to look up at me. “Something is up with you. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Jake wants to hide Nahuel on the res, and we thought it would be best to hide him here. With us,” I replied, hoping that half the truth would be enough to satisfy her. For a moment, it looked like my diversion might have worked. Until she started asking all the logical questions I should have realized she would ask, if my head were on straight right now.

“Here? In our house? Why would you think I’d agree to that?” she demanded. “Why would you agree to it? You hate everything to do with vampires.” 

I hesitated. Just half a second. And that’s all it took for my incredibly insightful mother. She latched on to that pause for breath like a Rottweiler with a Chihuahua in its teeth.

“You are hiding something. Something about this vampire.” I could see the wheels turning in her head. She mentally shifted around pieces of information and speculation like a puzzle, shaping a picture out of what little she knew and what she suspected.

“Jake must be helping you,” she continued. “Why would he help you hide something from the elders?”

“We’re not, Mom,” I countered, eager to point her away from the truth she was approaching in rapidly constricting circles. “Jake’s talking to the other elders and I’m telling you now. We’re not hiding anything from you. We just need a safe place to stash Nahuel. He’s got the Cullens and Renesmee mixed up in his problems, and that means Jake’s mixed up in it too.”

Again, she looked like she might be buying it. If I’d stopped there, instead of continuing with my blather, I might have gotten away with it. But of course, my brain-to-mouth filter has never been very effective, and I just had to keep going.

“You know Jake; if it threatens his imprint he’ll do just about anything …”

My verbal diarrhea trickled to a halt. Mom was staring me with absolute, undisguised horror on her face. Fuck me and my big, fat, hairy mouth.

She took another step toward me and grabbed me by the arms. “Is that what you’re hiding, Leah?” she whispered. “Have you imprinted on this vampire?” My stomach plummeted to my kneecaps.

“Half-vampire,” I corrected her, pulling away and leaning back against the refrigerator. I didn’t know what else to say, so I simply waited, watching while she processed all the implications of her realization. I probably looked just as shell-shocked a few hours ago, I thought.

“That’s why you want to let him stay here, isn’t it?” she asked. She’s not usually the hand-wringing type, but since I’d pulled out of her grasp, she apparently needed something to do with her hands. I watched my normally unflappable mother clasp her hands together and begin twisting her fingers over her knuckles in frantic little circles. “You want to keep him nearby. You need to be near him. Isn’t that how the imprinting works?”

“That’s what Jake tells me,” I replied, trying to make my tone sound light and unconcerned. And failing miserably. I watched her clench and twist her fingers for another moment, then reached out and took her hands in both of mine. I gently drew her toward the kitchen table and pressed her down into a chair.

“Look Mom, I’m not going to let this stand in the way of my duty to the pack, or to you and Seth,” I tried to reassure her. “I know my priority has to be the protection of our tribe and our family. I will keep you safe and protect our home. This isn’t going to change anything for me.”

She looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “This changes everything. You’re just going to make yourself miserable if you try to deny that. This isn’t something you can ignore or make go away.”

“I know that, too,” I growled, dropping down into the chair opposite hers. I didn’t want to talk about this right now, not even with her, and here she was bringing up all the same questions I’d been asking myself for the past several hours. And I still had no answers for either of us.

“Have you talked to him yet?”

“No. I didn’t exactly stick around long enough to chat with him when it happened. I was kind of freaked out.”

That drew a small smile out of her. “I’ll bet,” she replied. Then, echoing the conversation I’d had with Jacob just a few hours before, “What are you going to do?”

I looked away from her eyes, and pretended to brush imaginary crumbs off the table. Now that she knew the truth, I might as well be completely honest with her. 

“I really don’t know. It’s not like I can jump into some kind of relationship with him. I don’t even know him. But I just can’t deal with not knowing where he is or if he’s being protected. I need him to be here, with me. If he has to hide, if he’s going to be in danger no matter what we do, at least I’ll be there, too.”

When I looked back up, her beautiful dark eyes were swimming with tears and her hands were battling on the table in front of her again. A tight pain seized the base of my throat. “Jeez, Mom, don’t,” I choked out. 

“I’m sorry, Leah,” she said quietly. “I can’t imagine what this must be like for you. I won’t lie and say I can be happy about this, or even okay with it. And I think you should deal with this rather than try to avoid it like you seem to be doing.”

I opened my mouth to object, but she stopped me with a look. “You are avoiding it. That’s what you do when you feel like you can’t control a situation.” She paused to draw in a deep, shaky breath, and her expression grew gentle. “But I want you to know I will do whatever you need me to do, whatever it takes to make this easier for you.”

The tight feeling was back in my throat, only this time it was caused by intense gratitude and relief. She wasn’t angry, wasn’t blaming me. She understood that I needed time to deal with my imprint in my own way. “Well, you can keep this from Seth, for starters,” I told her, grabbing her hands again. “I just need space to figure this out on my own. I need to figure him out on my own.”

She snorted and shook her head. “I won’t say anything to Seth, although I won’t be surprised if he figures it out on his own.” She slowly rose from the table and collected her purse and keys.

“And you won’t be doing this alone,” she told me. “No matter how much you want to avoid it, you’re going to have to talk to Nahuel. And the sooner the better.” 

Of course she was right. She usually was. It’s just that I had no idea what to say to him, or even if he’d care to listen when I did figure out what to say. 

I did the only thing I could: Push the issue to a mental back burner and focus on more mundane matters, like preparing the Clearwater residence to receive the strangest guest it had ever hosted. And that was saying something, considering the place was inhabited by shape-shifters.

SSW/SSW/SSW

Mom insisted on making a big dinner to welcome Nahuel.

“Mom, we don’t even know if he likes human food,” I cautioned her, watching her pull a dozen thick steaks from the freezer. Eating with him, feeding him, seemed so ordinary, and somehow insignificant, considering the pivotal impact he was going to have on my life. Was already having, I mentally corrected myself.

“Hospitality is always appropriate,” she replied, as if she’d read my thought. “And everybody likes steak. Even if he doesn’t like it, it’s not as if the food will go to waste with Seth here.”

The aforementioned human Hoover bopped into the kitchen just as Mom was putting the finishing touches on a huge bowl of potato salad. He took one look at the mound of meat on the counter and broke into a loopy grin. “Steak? Awesome! Is this because Nahuel is coming and we want to impress him?”

“Why would we want to impress him?” I snapped at my kid brother. Fortunately, Seth was too lost in anticipation of a feast to question my over-reaction to his innocent comment. 

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I don’t know! Just asking. So you want me to fire up the grill?” 

“Get cleaned up first, and then you can start the grill,” Mom said, tapping him lightly on the rump. She watched Seth disappear down the hall, heading toward our tiny bathroom, before turning to me. “Did Jacob say what time they’d get here?”

At that moment, I heard two distinct sounds: the wheezing cough of Jake’s prehistoric pickup as it pulled into our driveway and—far louder and more terrifying—the thumping of my heart as it skipped into hyper-drive. I could barely get words out around the invisible talon that was clenched around my throat and dragging me relentlessly toward the front door. 

“They’re here now.”

I stumbled to a halt a few steps short of the door, unable to look away from it. Two sets of footsteps approached over our gravel driveway. I knew Jake’s tread as well as my own. The other … 

The doorbell rang. That tinny, cheesy chime had never sounded so ominous before, not even on the day Charlie Swan rang it to tell us my father had died. He’d lived his life believing all vampires, even the Cullens, were a threat to our tribe. What would he think of his daughter imprinting on a half-vampire?

Mom came up behind me, glancing from the door to the spot where I stood rooted like a tree stump. “Aren’t you going to open it for them?”

I looked at her, desperate for help. I couldn’t move my arms or legs, and I was trying. I shook my head, panicked, pleading with my eyes for her to do something. She reached up and gently rubbed my back before stepping around me and opening the door.

Jake’s enormous form filled the doorway. “Hey, Sue,” he greeted her, bending down to give her a quick one-armed hug. A stuffed leather duffel dangled from his other hand. I caught the faint whiff of vampire from it and wrinkled my nose. More donated clothes, no doubt.

Jake caught the direction of my gaze and handed the duffel to Mom. “You might want to wash those right away. Esme tried to get the smell out of them, but you know how it is.”

Mom laughed nervously and stepped back from Jake, not being the least bit subtle about the fact that she was trying to peer around him. Jake gave me an encouraging smile, and then stepped into the house, revealing Nahuel behind him.

My half-vampire imprint—My imprint!—stood on our weather-beaten front porch. His hands were fisted inside the pockets of his borrowed jeans, which were brand new, of course, because no Cullen ever wore any article of clothing more than once. His shoulders were hunched and his whole body seemed stooped forward, his eyes downcast and fixed on the toes of his shoes (also new). He looked like he was desperately trying to disappear. Or evaporate.

I couldn’t help myself. I stared, taking inventory of every line of his body and face. It was like I was seeing him for the first time, and in a sense, I was. 

I thought I’d been prepared to see him up close, because I knew, intellectually, that all vampires were beautiful. Visual appeal was part of their predatory arsenal, how they drew human victims to them. And I’d certainly seen my share of stunning vampires. So I thought I knew how his appearance would affect me, both physically and emotionally.

I didn’t know a damn thing.

He was more beautiful than any vampire I’d ever seen. Even lost and broken as he so obviously was, he was more intoxicating, more compelling, more heart-breaking … just more. Shorter than Jake or Seth, he still had a few inches on me. His skin was a flawless, rich brown that made me think of sweet, light coffee. His mouth was sensual yet serious, with an enticing fullness to his lower lip. His hair, too short for my taste and glossy blue-black like a raven’s wing, made my fingers itch to touch it. He was breathtakingly beautiful but in a wholly masculine way.

In the dwindling sunlight of the late summer afternoon, every inch of his damnable perfection was on display except for his eyes, which were still trained on his shoes.

Then, as if he, too, could sense that invisible cable tightening, he looked up, meeting my gaze. I felt those psychic hooks punch in deeper, piercing through my breast bone, sinking into my trip-hammering heart, squeezing tight until I felt sure the damn thing would explode.

The universe held its breath, and I was certain there wasn’t anything—not an earth quake, tornado or even the arrival of Nahuel’s psychotic father—that could make me tear my eyes away from his. Of course, my brother proved me wrong.

Like a badly trained over-grown puppy, Seth bounded into the living room and right up to Nahuel. I’d forgotten that my brother had spent part of the day with Jacob at the Cullen house. He must have met Nahuel there already. 

“Hey, man! Good to see you again. C’mon in.” Trust Seth to totally miss the tension in the room. Nahuel broke our stare and gave Seth a tentative smile.

“Hello, Seth,” he said. Two simple, innocuous words. Yet a wave of craven, shameless lust swept through my body at the sound of his voice. Deep and rich like his eyes, the timbre fell somewhere between the hymns of heaven and the whispered temptations of Lucifer. 

Finally he stepped over our threshold to stand next to Jake. Seth dropped his arm around Mom’s shoulder. “This is my mom, Sue Clearwater. She’s one of our tribal elders.”

“Welcome to our home, Nahuel,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” My mother smiled kindly and offered her hand. 

As if she were meeting a pleasant new acquaintance at the reservation’s community center instead of a century-and-a-half old vampire who had her only daughter in a biological headlock. I groaned inwardly. My whole family was just too damned used to weird shit. It wasn’t normal. Or healthy.

Nahuel was obviously surprised by her gesture and words, but recovered quickly and gave her hand a brief shake.

“Thank you, Mrs. Clearwater,” he said in that voice that made my stomach flutter and my mouth go dry. “I appreciate your hospitality. I will do my best to not be any more of a burden to your family than I must.”

“You’re no burden, man,” Seth said, clapping him on the shoulder and pulling him further into the room. “This is what we Quileute werewolves do, fight evil vampires. When Joham shows up here, he’ll be in for a majorly nasty surprise.”

It was impossible to miss the sudden polar shift in Nahuel’s demeanor at the mere mention of his father’s name. He cringed visibly. A hunted look crept across his face. He shuddered and shrank in on himself again, eyes darting around the room. 

Shit, he’s two steps away from a total panic attack. It’s almost like post-traumatic stress or something. He’s going to lose it right here in my living room!

Somehow I knew he would hate to appear weak in front of my small, fragile and painfully kind human mother. I did the only thing I could think of to divert his mind. I stepped forward and extended my hand, mimicking my mother’s soft approach.

“I’m Leah,” I said, willing him to register and absorb my calm, even tone. “You’re safe here. Please come in and sit down. Mom’s making dinner. Are you hungry?”

Nahuel’s eyes stopped their frenzied flitting and zeroed in on me. He stared at my extended hand for just a moment before slowly, oh so slowly, wrapping his long fingers around mine.

Heat surged up my arm from the light pressure of his hand. Once, when we were really little kids, Seth had dared me to jam a penny into a wall socket. The touch of Nahuel’s hand felt exactly like that electrical shock—except more intense and totally, deliriously erotic. That simple, innocent contact was as arousing and intimate as a kiss.

“Leah,” he breathed. 

I forgot my mother and brother standing expectantly beside us. Forgot Jake standing there lump-like and useless. Hell, I wouldn’t have recognized my own name if he hadn’t just turned it into the single most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. 

“I remember you.” 

My thundering heart skipped a beat. He remembers me? 

Had I affected him so deeply six years ago? Was he feeling the aching pull, too? Was he as confused and utterly connected as I was? I knew I looked like an idiot, but I couldn’t help myself. A big, stupid grin erupted on my face.

“You do?”

“Yes.” His warm brown eyes abruptly turned hard and angry, but he didn’t let go of my hand. 

“You called me a coward.”


	6. Absolute Beginners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The amazing, ever-insightful MunkeeRajah and Evelyn beta’d this chapter. They plug my plot holes, police my commas and make my lemons super citrusy. Thanks, ladies!
> 
> Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer.

Chapter 6 – Absolute Beginners

Leah POV

The crescent moon crept over the treetops as I loped through the forest. A light drizzle made the ground loamy beneath my paws and glossed every leaf and branch with softly shimmering beads. 

After a tiring day at work, and a boring, fruitless patrol, I was yearning for a hot shower and some sack time. Oh yeah, and a reprieve, please, from my nearly endless mental replay of that humiliating first meeting with my imprint five days ago.

In the history of unlikely pairings was there ever a couple that got off to a worse start? 

I remember you. You called me a coward.

“You didn’t!” Mom had admonished, clearly appalled by my alleged rudeness. Okay, my actual rudeness. Delighted at my embarrassment, Seth had made a big show of laughing so hard he collapsed on the floor. Jake hadn’t even tried to hide his smirk.

At least Seth’s antics had broken the tension enough for me to mumble a half-assed apology, and that had made the big jerk laugh even harder. My traitorous mother had looped her arm through Nahuel’s like they were old friends and towed him away for a “grand tour” of our three-bedroom ranch. 

As mortifying and confusing as that first exchange with Nahuel had been, it was what Jake had told me privately later that really had my mind whirling in stressed circles. Standing beside his pickup, he’d said that Alice had found multiple blind spots in her vision, meaning we could expect more than one wave of attack.

“Maybe some scouts will show up first,” Jake had said. “We can’t be sure, so we’ll all need to be extra careful.”

Then, he’d relayed a warning from Edward and Carlisle. Why are they telling me anything? I’d wondered. We don’t even like each other. And I felt instantly guilty because Carlisle at least had never been anything but considerate and helpful to me. 

“They wanted me to tell you to be careful with Nahuel,” Jake had said. “Carlisle thinks he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. You know, that disorder soldiers experience after battle? Edward agrees. Says Nahuel could be hair-trigger and possibly even dangerous.”

I knew they might be right, that what Nahuel had experienced—the trauma of his aunt’s murder, his father’s insanity and brutality—could lead to erratic, maybe even destructive behavior. I also knew he was venomous; he’d changed his aunt by biting her minutes after his birth. His venom made him dangerous to other humans, and especially to us wolves, in a way Renesmee was not.

I’d agreed to be careful, if for no other reason than to give Jake some peace of mind. But secretly, I’d told myself that the emotionally fragile and pathetic half-vampire getting ready to settle into my brother’s room for the night couldn’t possibly harm my family or me.

I’d been both right and wrong. 

He was wonderful with my mother. He ate her meals with gusto, kept up his end of the conversation no matter how mundane it must have seemed to him, and even helped her with the dinner dishes every night. The fond smiles and gentle touches she gave him hinted that she would consider him the perfect son-in-law if it weren’t for the whole venomous half-vampire thing. I had no idea who this woman was, but she was not the vampire-hating harpy who raised me, that was for sure.

Nearly every day Jake escorted Nahuel to the Cullens’ house, where Carlisle continued to monitor his health and Jasper provided battle training. He was respectful and amiable to them all, from what Jake told me. And he seemed to have developed the same affection for Seth that practically everyone else with a pulse, or without one, felt toward the muscle-bound twerp.

Vamp-boy’s attitude toward me, however, was slowly driving me mad. 

Was it possible to kill someone with aloof politeness? He sure seemed to be trying. If I attempted to make conversation, he tactfully found something else to do. If he was alone in a room and I entered it, he courteously wandered elsewhere. I couldn’t even complain about his behavior to my mother because she was already his biggest fan

Talk about passive-aggressive. His civility and avoidance were his way of punishing me for insulting him at first sight. Apparently, Nahuel didn’t just hold grudges, he nurtured them.

I tried to act as if nothing had changed in my life. I went to work every day in the stock room of the tire store owned by one of the tribal elders. Ran patrols. Tried to pretend that it didn’t hurt every time he wrenched on that damned invisible cable with an infuriatingly polite brush-off here or a disinterested glance there.

My thoughts returned to the present as my home appeared through the trees. I phased in the underbrush, sprinted across the yard on two legs, and slipped quietly into the house. Seth snored loudly on the sleeper-sofa. Generous as always, he’d given his room to Nahuel without hesitation or complaint.

I didn’t bother to turn on any lights as I padded through the dark house. I didn’t bother with clothes, either. Seth and Mom had seen me in the altogether plenty of times already, an unavoidable reality of life as a shape-shifter. And if Nahuel happened to open his door and get an eyeful, well, maybe the free show would finally get a real reaction out of him.

As I passed his door, I paused, listening. Quiet and even, his breathing assured me he was sleeping peacefully for a change. 

He’d had nightmares nearly every night. Waking us with his screaming seriously marred his record as a perfect house guest. When I’d entered his room to check on him that first night, he’d snarled at me like an animal. At that point, we’d all decided that it would be better to let him deal with his nightmares on his own. Each morning, he was back to normal, or whatever passed for his normal, and he said nothing about his dreams.

In my room, I pulled on sleep shorts and a tank before opening my bedroom window to let in the cool night air. My dad had central air put in the house years ago, but I wanted to feel the natural breeze on my skin. Maybe it would help clear my head.

Exhausted, I flopped face-down on the bed. As sleep dragged me under, I thought I heard a velvety whisper. 

“I remember you …”

SSW/SSW/SSW

Tonight it was silence, not screaming, that woke me. I bolted upright in bed, the muscles in my arms and legs so tense they were on the verge of cramping painfully.

In just five short days, I’d gotten used to the sound of four heartbeats in my home at night. I’d come to know that fourth beat as well as I knew my own. Now, in the space that should have been filled with the sound of Nahuel’s heart thrumming steady and fast, I heard only silence. 

I scrambled from my bed, tripped on the sheet tangled around my legs, and stumbled across the room. I jerked open the bedroom door before remembering that it was the dead of night and Mom and Seth were still sleeping. From the living room, the rumble of Seth’s snores confirmed that he was deep in la-la land. The door to my parents’ room was closed, and I could hear my mother’s steady, peaceful breathing beyond it.

Across the hall, a rumpled, empty bed was visible through the open door of Nahuel’s room.

Quickly, quietly, I searched the house. There weren’t many places for him to hide. I passed through the living room where Seth was sprawled across the sleeper-sofa wearing nothing but his tightey-whiteys, a slather of saliva smeared on his face. The kitchen was empty, as was the tiny laundry room next to it.

Nahuel wasn’t in the house. My already-racing heart kicked into overdrive and my hands began to shake. He wasn’t supposed to leave the house without Jake, Seth or me. I didn’t want to think about the trouble he could get into wandering around on his own.

I checked the back door that led outside from the kitchen. It was closed but unlocked. My mother was obsessive about locking doors at night, even though she knew a deadbolt wouldn’t stop any newborn sent by Joham. 

Fuck. Where did he go? What the hell is he doing?

I needed to track him. The easiest way would be to simply open myself to the imprinting connection and allow it to lead me to him. But if anyone else in the pack was on four feet when I did that, he would realize what I was doing and my privacy would be over. I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me. In the shadow of the eave over the back door, I stripped and phased. Instantly, I caught the distant thoughts of Embry, who had relieved me from patrol duty a few hours ago.

‘Sup, Leah?

Everything’s cool, I told him, carefully keeping my thoughts focused on the moment. Even though Jake was blocking awareness of my imprint from the other pack members, I didn’t want to risk thinking about Nahuel too much while Embry was listening in. 

I think our guest went for a midnight stroll. I’m just going to find him and get him back to the house. Don’t think the elders would like him running the res without supervision.

You’re probably right! Howl if you need me. I’m all the way on the other side of Forks right now, but I could be there fast if you want.

Thanks, I’m good, though. ‘Scuse me, but I gotta focus here. I hoped Embry would buy that as justification for my tuning him out.

I slowly began to circle the house, nose to the ground, my clothes clenched in my teeth. The shorts and shirt would be covered with dirt and drool when I put them back on. Ah, the joys of werewolfhood.

I caught Nahuel’s scent heading down the driveway and followed it to the road. It totally weirded me out that he smelled like cinnamon and spice, comfort and lust. At least that’s how he smelled to me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Jake or Seth if they found my imprint’s aroma as exotic as I did. 

Our house was nearly a mile from the nearest neighbor and several miles from the main part of the reservation. I thought at first he might be heading into town, but a mile down the road, his scent turned off the pavement and into the forest, aiming toward the beach. Between work and patrolling, I hadn’t been to La Push in a dog’s age, but it looked like my imprint was headed there.

It didn’t take long to reach La Push, and as soon as my paws touched the sand, I knew he was there. The bouquet of Nahuel’s scent was much stronger, and I could hear his familiar heartbeat, even above the rushing sound of the waves rolling onto the beach.

Found him, I sent Embry’s way, then quickly phased to human form so I could shut him out of my head. I threw on my damp, dirty clothes and strode onto the beach. Now that my mind was isolated from Embry, it was safe to allow myself to be guided by Nahuel’s powerful pull.

At the base of a large stone outcropping that faced the ocean, I found Nahuel sitting in a puddle of sea water. He wore nothing but his borrowed boxers. His knees were drawn up against his chest and his muscular arms were clenched tight around his bent legs. His dark head was burrowed into his kneecaps, hiding his face. He rocked back and forth in rapid, jerky motions.

Pain punched through my chest and forced the air from my lungs, as if someone twice my size had just kicked me in the solar plexus. He looked lost, shattered and utterly alone. 

I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be happy to see me, but I couldn’t leave him here. I’d rather have him angry at me than leave him alone in this condition.

I shuffled forward in the sand, trying to make enough noise to alert him to my presence.

“Nahuel?” 

He didn’t lift his head or give any indication that he heard me, just continued his obsessive rocking. I took a few more steps, until I was standing directly over him, and called his name again. He stopped swaying, but still didn’t unclench his body from his balled-up posture. 

Unsure of what to do, I sank to my knees beside him in the wet sand.

“What are you doing out here?” I ventured, trying to keep my tone neutral. I didn’t want him to think I was angry at him for taking off on his own. Although I was pissed. And scared. 

If I’d been an ordinary human, I wouldn’t have caught his muffled reply; but I was a werewolf, and he was my imprint. I’d have heard his whisper if we were standing on opposite ends of a wind tunnel with head-banging heavy metal music piped in at full volume.

“Getting away from you.”

That chest-punched feeling slammed into me again, so strong this time it rocked me back on my heels. Those four words from him hurt more than any of the thousands Sam had spoken when he was trying to explain and apologize for imprinting on Emily. My first instinct was to shout, “Fuck you!” Leave him here alone. Let Joham have his sorry, half-vampire ass, no matter how good it looked in those boxers.

As I tensed my muscles to propel myself away from him, I heard his breath catch. He slowly levered his head out of his arms, turning his face toward me. His eyes were clenched shut, tears shimmering on his impossibly long lashes. 

“I have to get away from you and Seth and Sue,” he choked out. “I have to get away from the Cullens. Before he follows me here and kills you all.”

Understanding dawned, quickly followed by relief so strong it made me feel physically weak. Because he wants to protect us. Not because he wants to leave me.

I moved without thinking. Miraculously, my hand didn’t tremble as I grabbed his shoulder and shook it. “Look at me, Nahuel,” I ordered, infusing my voice with strength and calm I certainly wasn’t feeling. The electric charge of our skin-to-skin contact finally forced his eyes open. They focused on mine, desperate and bewildered.

“Your leaving wouldn’t stop him from coming here,” I told him, careful to avoid saying his father’s name. “He knows about Renesmee now and he wants you both. We can’t undo that. We can only stand together and fight him when he does come.”

He studied me for a long moment with his honey-hued eyes, as if considering what I’d said. Slowly, he uncurled his arms from around his legs, relaxing his position so that he now sat cross-legged in the sand. Still hunched over, he resumed his rocking, but now the movement was more distracted than frantic. I dropped my tingling hand into my lap.

“The day I left six years ago, I began thinking about returning here,” he said. “I so admired the Cullens and the life they have made for themselves. I admired their ability to live with compassion among humans.”

He gazed out over the waves that crashed onto the sand yards away from where we sat. I felt like he was talking to the surf now, as if he’d forgotten I was there beside him.

“I wanted that for myself,” he continued quietly. “I had thought myself a monster by nature my entire life. Only a truly evil creature would slaughter the person who gave it life. I did not know any other way to live or to think about myself, but I was tired of being a monster. I returned home and became a … vegetarian.” 

I couldn’t breathe as he uttered the euphemism the Cullens used to describe vampires who live on animal blood rather than human. If preying on animals was a lifestyle change for him, then that meant my worst fears were confirmed: He had fed on humans in the past. 

In the very instant my mind screamed in anguish, wondering how I could be with someone who had taken innocent lives, that damned psychic cable smacked sharply, hurtfully against my heart. Its message was clear. 

His past didn’t matter at all. I wanted him. He needed me. There was nothing else beyond that.

He was talking again. “But feeding on the blood of animals made me weak. I could not protect Huilen, could not fight my sire. Only my half-sister’s pity saved me from him.”

Abruptly, he leaped to his feet. His fingers twisted in his hair, pulling hard, as if pain would make it easier to keep talking, to keep unburdening himself of these thoughts that were tormenting him.

“Now I am here and I have put you all in danger. Living on human food and animal blood, I will never be strong enough to fight him.” His hands moved from his hair to his eyes, scrubbing at them hard before settling over his lips. “Yet I cannot go back to being the monster I was that preyed on humans,” he continued, his voice muffled and his face haunted, “no matter how physically powerful that would make me.”

He dropped his hands and turned to me. “The only way I can think to stop him from following me is to take away what he most wants. If I am dead, he will have no reason to come here. The Cullens, Seth, Sue … you … will all be safe.”

He took a single tentative step toward me, his mournful eyes begging me to understand. “Help me, Leah,” he pleaded. “Help me make everyone safe.”

I understood exactly what he was asking of me. Fury exploded through my body, burning, white-hot fury powerful enough to bring down a jumbo jet or level a city.

“You selfish, self-pitying son of a bitch,” I seethed. “You come here. You practically leave Joham a freaking map and engraved invitation. You make everyone care about you. You make my mother and brother love you. You turn my life upside down.”

I was shouting at the top of my lungs now, my voice completely over-powering the pounding surf. Nahuel gaped at me like a hooked fish on the bottom of a boat. My rant reached critical mass and I couldn’t have stopped even if I had wanted to.

“And you think I’m going to help you leave everyone high and dry by killing you?” I howled hoarsely, my throat burning from the sheer volume. “You know what? I take my apology back. You are a coward. A lousy, fucking, selfish coward …”

I knew I’d gone too far, crossed over a line I should never have approached, the second that word was out of my mouth. 

Instantly, his glorious, tortured eyes grew diamond-hard. Rage boiled on his angel’s face. He covered the short distance between us with a single step, latched his strong hands around my upper arms, and jerked me against his body. His mouth slammed down on mine.

I’d never had anyone force a kiss on me before. You’d think it would have pissed me off even more than I already was. It totally did not.

Disoriented with desire, I buried my fingers in that short, shaggy hair just as I’d been fantasizing about doing for days. His lips were not gentle and his hands gripped my arms so tightly it hurt. That’s going to leave a mark, I thought hazily. 

My body vibrated with lust, molding along the length of his muscled form so closely I didn’t know where my skin left off and his began. His tongue swept inside my mouth, leading mine in a maddening duel that left me yearning for more. I moaned into his mouth. The sound made him even wilder and more aggressive. One hand came up to tangle in the hair at my nape while the other moved south to my ass. When that hand flexed and pressed me forward, I felt the hard proof of his desire throbbing against my stomach.

The effect of his erection grinding into my body was like drinking a gallon of coffee after an all-night bender: instantly head-clearing. As his mouth continued to move on mine and his hands grew bolder, I realized that what he wanted and what he needed from me were, at this moment, two entirely different things.

He wanted to fuck me senseless. He wanted a respite from overwhelming fear and despair, and sex would give him that. My body was totally in tune with that plan, but my head knew what he really needed from me was not a quick hump in the sand. 

He needed a reason to stay alive and fight his father. 

Pushing weakly on his shoulders, I turned my head, moving my lips out of his reach. He ignored the hint. His hot mouth roved down my jawline to my throat, licking and sucking greedily. I shivered.

If he bites me, I’m dead. What a way to go … 

He was muttering something, heated words in a language I didn’t know. His hands slipped under my clothes, one driving my tank up my back, the other delving lower beneath the waistband of my shorts. Oh God, his hands, his mouth, his smell! Move now or you’re not going to be able to stop.

I tore my body from his and stumbled a step backward. Losing contact with his deliciously warm skin felt like plunging into an ice bath.

His head might not be feeling the effects of the imprinting—might never feel them—but his body certainly was. If I played my cards right, I could use his lust to my advantage. I wouldn’t be the first woman to use sex to manipulate a man.

Nahuel obviously wasn’t ready to stop. He gasped rapidly, raggedly, his teak eyes dark and hooded with hunger—for my flesh, not my blood. He reached for me as if he would draw me back into his arms. I took another step back.

“We need to stop,” I said, my voice shaking badly.

Anger replaced the lust in his eyes. “Why?” he ground out through gritted teeth. “You want me. I have smelled it on you all week. And I want you. If we are going to die soon anyway, why deny ourselves what we both desire?”

Guess he was done playing his game of “let’s pretend Leah doesn’t exist.” Thank God. I didn’t think we’d be going back to pretending we had no mutual attraction, not after this. But I wasn’t ready to let this move forward, either. 

“We are not going to die,” I said, putting another two paces between us. “I admit that I want you, too, but neither of us is ready for this. And this is definitely not the time or the place.”

He was listening. Breaking our physical contact had helped clear his head, too. “I’m not saying no,” I continued. “I’m just saying not now. Not yet. But ‘not yet’ is going to become ‘not on your life’ if you ever bring up the idea of suicide again. Got it?”

He considered my words for a few moments, his gaze wandering between my lips and my eyes. Finally, wordlessly, he nodded, and I realized I’d been holding my breath.

“Good,” I said, giving him a weak smile. “We should go back to the house. This beach isn’t exactly the safest spot for us right now.”

When he nodded again, I turned to leave the beach and lead him home. He followed me silently through the night, and I smiled to myself.

I think I’ve found a use for that miserable psychic cable, I thought. It just might be the key to keeping Nahuel alive.


	7. Never Get Old

Jacob POV

When I was sixteen, I thought I had found the love of my life. Then, I turned into a wolf, fur, fangs, drool—the whole enchilada. Suddenly, I couldn’t be with the girl I loved. I couldn’t tell her what I was going through, couldn’t help her continue mending her badly broken heart, couldn’t imagine any scenario that would allow me to stay in her world. 

To say that I thought my life was shot to hell is an understatement. There was, however, one bright, beautiful spot in the dark, fetid crapper my existence had become: I got to drop out of high school.

I escaped the torture normal kids have to endure in the pressure cooker of festering hormones and angst that is high school. Even after I found the real love of my life when Nessie was born, and it took me a few extra years to get my G.E.D., I didn’t regret missing out on the catty, gossipy, in-everyone-else’s-business atmosphere that poisons those four years. 

I was glad, thrilled, to skip the drama.

So when Renesmee started obsessing over the whole Leah/Nahuel situation like a cheerleader who’d discovered an exciting new shade of lip gloss, it really made me want to pierce my own eardrums with a rusty nail.

“I’m just living vicariously, Jake,” she said, trailing her fingertips through the fur of my ruff. “I mean, I never got to experience that whole ‘blush of first love’ thing. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love you, when I didn’t know you were my mate.”

We were returning from an early morning hunt, walking slowly, just enjoying the time alone together. Neither of us was in a big hurry to get home. Any private conversation would have to stop as soon as we were within earshot of the Cullens’ house. Half the family would be there, since Jasper had decided to hold a mass training session this morning. Luckily for Ness, Alice had summoned her back to the house. Wedding plans apparently took precedence over battle preparation. 

Love you. My mate. I never got tired of hearing her apply those words to me. She owned me, body and soul, and there was no way I could not tell her about Leah and Nahuel. So I had no one to blame but myself for her fixation. If I hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t be badgering me now for details. 

I felt a pang of guilt, because I hadn’t actually told Leah yet that Ness knew. I figured my beta should kind of assume there was no way I could keep something as important as her imprinting from my imprint. I just hoped she wouldn’t kick my tail too hard when she found out.

I understood why Nessie was curious about Nahuel, since he was the only other half-vampire we’d ever met. It even made sense that she would be fascinated that another wolf had imprinted on another hybrid. Still, I felt a little jealous that she could be so focused on something other than us, especially considering all the wedding planning that was going on in the Cullen household. 

I’d never really seen Nahuel as a threat to my relationship with Ness. Not only did I know that she was as nuts about me as I was for her, I was confident that Nahuel’s interest lay elsewhere. Over the past few days, I’d watched him zeroing in on Leah like a stallion sniffing around a choice mare. I figured he’d discover for himself soon enough that this mare had sharp fangs and no fear of using them. 

Yet, other than that observation, I really didn’t have that many details to offer Renesmee. Besides, I felt more than a little weird discussing Leah’s sex life—or lack thereof—with Ness. 

I wanted to be done with this conversation, at least for a while. I shook my head and snorted loudly, spraying her sneakers with gobs of wolf snot. Verbal communication isn’t always necessary to get your point across.

“Ewww! Gross!” She propped one small, snot-covered foot on my flank, grabbed my bushy tail and swiped it across her slimy sneaker. After repeating the process with the other foot, she dropped my tail and shoved me away.

“Don’t try to distract me,” she chuckled as we resumed our slow stroll. Exasperated, I rolled my eyes. Wouldn’t dream of it.

“I just want to know what it’s like,” she continued, “that first moment when you realize you’re in love. If that’s even what Leah and Nahuel are feeling right now. I mean, for all we know it could just be purely physical at this point …”

I had so heard enough. I dipped my head and nipped at her heels, our private signal that I wanted to play one of our favorite games. Giggling like a teenager, Nessie took off running vampire-fast through the trees, heading toward the river that would lead us back to the house. I was after her in seconds, allowing her to stay a few paces ahead of me.

Catching her was, of course, the best part of the game. I waited until we were within eyeshot of the water before snagging my teeth in the hem of her flannel shirt. She screamed with laughter. Tugging backward sharply, I spun us both around so that she landed on her back beneath me. I planted my front paws on either side of her shoulders, ducked my head, and licked her face from chin to brow.

“You jerk!” she shrieked. Using the bottom of her shirt, she wiped my spit off her face, a move that exposed acres of creamy white stomach and a hint of lacy black bra. One look, and I was done for. 

I phased and dropped, naked, on top of her, straddling her on my hands and knees. She looked amazing, flushed with laughter, her eyes glistening. I wanted nothing more than to taste every inch of her right there on the grassy river bank. Instead, I carefully held my body above hers, minimizing skin contact. Her laughter choked off immediately.

“See, this is what I’m talking about, Jake,” she said breathily, reaching up to twine her fingers in my hair. She tugged hard, drawing me toward her. “You pull a stunt like this and expect me to keep my hands to myself?”

I really didn’t feel like talking, so I lowered my lips to hers. Pressing light nips along her bottom lip, I coaxed her mouth open for me. As I deepened the kiss, she wrapped her jeans-clad legs around my hips and jerked me down into the cradle of her thighs. In the same heartbeat, she opened her mind to me. Her arousal speared through my brain, down my body and straight to my groin.

Instant. Raging. Hard-on. 

Knucklehead. What did you think was going to happen when your naked ass jumped her?

We’d both agreed to wait until we were married, but lately she seemed to be regretting that decision, testing my willpower at every opportunity. She made it hard—in every sense of the word—to remember why we were waiting. I wanted to do things right, in a way that would ensure I kept the respect and trust I’d worked so hard to earn from her father. If we’d all just been ordinary people, I probably wouldn’t have cared what he thought. But getting my rocks off wasn’t worth the risk of having Edward pissed at me for eternity.

I broke the kiss and rolled away from her, drawing one knee up to hide my erection from her always-greedy eyes. No matter what Leah thought, I was not totally shameless. Renesmee was welcome to look at the rest of my body all she wanted, but there was no way I was going to let her ogle my boner. 

“Damn it, Ness!” I unstrapped my cutoffs from my leg and shook them out. “Turn around.”

“Oh, like I haven’t already seen it a million times, Jake,” she shot back, just as annoyed as I was. “Next time, don’t start something you’re not going to finish.” She sprang to her feet and showed me her back.

Of course, she was right. When things got out of hand between us, it was usually as much my fault as hers. I stood and shimmied into my cutoffs, cursing under my breath when I realized my big problem wasn’t going away. 

Shit. There’s no way I’m going to be able to zip up over this thing.

“Done?” she asked. Before I could tell her to stay put, she spun around and got an eyeful of my predicament. Her dark eyes popped wide and she clapped a palm over her mouth, trying to stifle her snickering.

“Guess I’ll need a swim before we head back to the house,” I sighed, eyeing the river.

“Well if you’re going to do that, shouldn’t you take your shorts off again?” she suggested, archly raising one eyebrow.

“Like hell,” I grumbled, holding my fly closed and splashing waist-deep into the chilly mountain stream.

It wouldn’t be the first time I went home with wet jeans. 

SSW/SSW/SSW

Jasper was a vampire on a mission. That mission was either to drive my pack to exhaustion or force Nahuel to vamp up and learn how to defend himself. It could possibly be both.

Our resident empath had been working us all like, well, dogs, for the better part of the day. If it had been anyone else, I’d have told him to ease up on Nahuel. Nearly two weeks after showing up on our doorstep battered and broken, he still had moments when he was clearly holding his shit together with his finger nails. I really wasn’t interested in seeing him completely lose it, and I was pretty sure Leah would be furious if I let things get to that point.

More than any of us, though, Jasper knew what was at stake and what Nahuel’s emotional limits were. So I kept my mouth shut and helped him put my pack mates and Leah’s imprint through their paces. Fortunately, Carlisle and Esme were also there to be the voices of reason when the sun began to set and Jasper was still driving us all hard.

“Jasper, I think we should wrap up for the day,” Carlisle said, when Beau, the youngest member of my pack, took a particularly hard fall while sparring with Emmett. “The wolves need a break. They won’t be as effective protecting Forks and the reservation if you run them into the ground training.”

It was pretty obvious that Jasper would rather keep going. He’d probably bring in floods to light up the practice field until dawn if Carlisle would let him. I understood his sense of urgency; he adored his niece with every inch of his cold, dead heart. I loved the dude for that. But he also knew when enough was enough, and I respected him for that.

Jasper finally called an end to the day’s activities. My pack mates had had some fun off-roading to the remote spot where we’d faced down the Volturi all those years ago. This site now served as a gathering place whenever the packs and vampires needed to come together. We’d trained for battle here, but we’d also held numerous picnics and baseball games in this field as well. 

Ever the considerate hostess, Esme had set up a tent where the guys could phase and dress with relative privacy. Of course, since wolf stomachs were involved, it was also stocked with plenty of snacks and drinks, too. I’d been watching on the sidelines in human form for the past hour, hanging out near the entrance of the tent. The vampires began to leave the clearing, and the four members of my pack who were training today—Embry, Quil, Paul and Beau—headed inside to change and unwind. 

Nahuel approached me. “Jake, may I have a word?”

“Sure. What’s up?” I’d brought him to today’s training session and would be giving him a ride home. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive with him. Nahuel was like a restless toddler in a vehicle. The day I’d delivered him to Leah’s door for the first time, I’d been stunned to learn he’d never before been in a car, not once in a hundred and fifty years. How was that even possible? He’d been an awful passenger, fidgeting, playing with the windows and sticking his head outside throughout the drive. 

He glanced toward the tent, where the sound of loud laughter broadcast that my pack brothers were up to their usual clowning around. He wanted privacy, or at least as close to it as he could get surrounded by creatures with super-human hearing. 

It was time to head home anyway, so I stuck my head in the tent and said a quick goodbye to the others. Then I nodded toward where my truck sat at the far end of the clearing and began to walk in that direction. He fell in step beside me.

We walked slowly in silence for a few moments. I’d learned Nahuel rarely spoke without thinking first about what he would say, and he was obviously weighing his words carefully now.

“Jacob, I wanted to ask you if Leah is … yours,” he said.

I stopped walking and stared at him blankly. “Huh?” After a second, understanding landed with a wet smack between my eyes. He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. Could he?

“I know you intend to marry Renesmee,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He looked like he’d rather not be having this conversation. “But I wanted to ask if Leah also belongs to you. Please understand, I have never before met a … family?” He looked at me, questioning, to see if that was the right word. I nodded. Close enough, I guess. “… A family like yours,” he continued, “and I don’t presume to understand the relationships in the group. You and Leah seem very close.”

My face and ears felt hot. He did mean what I thought he meant. I’d known he was interested in her, but I was still surprised that he was being so upfront about defining territory when it came to Leah.

“Leah is my beta, my second in command. She’s also my friend. Nothing more. I’m with Renesmee and no one else. Does that answer your question?”

He grinned widely, one of the few real smiles I’d seen from him. “Yes, I believe it does. Thank you.” 

In the past few days, I’d realized that I actually liked Nahuel. He’d been through hell and had every reason to be a miserable, weak asshole. But every day he struggled to master his fear, and I admired him for it. In the past few days, something had changed. He’d seemed less frantic, less likely to take off running. I’d suspected Leah had something to do with the change. Now, I was sure of it. 

We resumed walking in silence for a moment, but I sensed he wasn’t done yet. 

“I would ask one more thing,” he said, seeming more confident now. “I overheard some of your pack members discussing Leah and Sam. He is the leader of the other wolf pack, correct?” I nodded. “From what I understood, they were together and he chose another over Leah.”

I stopped walking again. “I guess that’s somewhat accurate. Why?”

Nahuel look skeptical. “Why would he do that?”

That question spoke volumes. 

I knew Leah probably thought Nahuel walked on water right about now, thanks to the effects of the imprinting bond. I was beginning to suspect she wasn’t the only one feeling that influence, however, if Nahuel truly couldn’t imagine why anyone would leave my prickly, ball-busting beta. 

Of course, there was no way I was going to tell Nahuel that Leah had imprinted on him. Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t talk about someone else’s experience, right?

“He imprinted on another woman, Emily,” I said. “Imprinting is a little hard to explain, but it’s kind of like the mating bond that vampires experience. Had you met a mated vampire pair before the Cullens?” He nodded, a thoughtful, reflective expression on his face.

“Well, when it happens to a wolf, his entire world realigns,” I continued. “Everything centers around the object of his imprinting. He would do anything, be anything for her. Any relationships or ties he had before aren’t as important as she is. She’s the only thing that matters, and he’ll do anything to give her what she needs.”

“Why didn’t Sam imprint on Leah?” Nahuel demanded. His tone clearly conveyed he thought Sam was a moron for throwing Leah over, no matter what the circumstances.

“He didn’t choose to imprint on Emily instead of Leah. It doesn’t work that way,” I explained. “It chooses you. We’re not sure why it happens, but when it does the wolf has no control over it.”

An odd combination of pity and disapproval played across his vampire-perfect face. I didn’t need Edward’s skills to know what he was thinking. 

“It’s not like that,” I hurried to correct him. “Imprinting is …” I struggled to find the right word, “… transcendent. It makes two imperfect individuals part of a perfect whole. When it happens to you, you know you’ll never be alone, never be lost again, because she is always a part of you. She is always your reason.” 

A spark of comprehension flickered in his eyes. “Is this what exists between you and Renesmee?”

“Yes,” I replied. I held my breath, silently willing him to make one more leap of understanding. Leah couldn’t be angry at me if he figured it out for himself, right? After all, Sam had given me a pass when Bella guessed my secret on her own all those years ago.

Maybe deep down he didn’t think he deserved that kind of devotion. Maybe he just couldn’t imagine that kind of love. Or maybe he wasn’t ready yet to admit to himself what I was pretty sure he did know, even if it was at a subconscious level. 

For whatever reason, he missed the moment and resumed walking toward my truck. I sighed and followed him. Sorry, Leah. I gave it a shot.

I needed to get Nahuel back to the reservation. And I really needed to have a come-to-Jesus with my beta. She’d put off the imprinting conversation long enough.


	8. I Never Dreamed

**Leah POV**

 

After that panty-melting kiss on the beach nearly a week ago, Nahuel shifted gears faster than a Cullen in an Italian sports car.

 

Instead of avoiding me, he was up my butt every time I turned around. Whenever we were alone, he was on me like a dog on a bone. Nahuel was a groper; there was just no other word for it. His mouth was magic, his body, sinfully tempting, but his hands, well, his hands were just _everywhere_. He was like a horny teenager relishing first-time access—granted, limited access—to a girl’s body.

 

More than once, Mom or Seth nearly walked in on us while Nahuel’s pretty paws were working on wearing down my resistance. Still, I thought we were doing a fairly good job of keeping the change in our relationship under wraps. Until the day Jake brought Nahuel home from yet another marathon training session and my Alpha literally took me out to the woodshed.

 

My dad had been famous for his fish fry, but cooking it really stank up the house, so my mother insisted he do it outside. It was our family’s dirty little secret that Harry Clearwater’s famed homemade fish fry wasn’t actually made in our home, but in the woodshed behind our house. Now, the shed housed our lawn mower and some gardening tools. The decrepit building smelled of grass clippings, old motor oil and faintly, even after all these years, Dad’s fish fry.

 

Jake parked his dusty butt on our old John Deere and glared at me. “What’s going on between you and Nahuel?” he demanded.

 

Dread bubbled up in my throat. “Why?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice calm. “Did he say something?”

 

“You could say that,” Jake hissed. “He asked me if you’re my mistress.” He spat out the words as if they tasted bad. His disgust would have offended me, if the question itself weren’t so damned hilarious. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed in his face. Vague discomfort gelled into outright annoyance in his eyes.

 

“Why would he ask that?” I finally managed, after my loud guffaws settled down to intermittent snorts.

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” he snapped. “Could it be because you still haven’t told him what’s really going on between you two? Because you haven’t explained to him how things work between wolves and their imprints?”

 

He crossed both beefy arms over his chest and leaned toward me, looking every bit like an Alpha wolf about to nip a lower-ranking pack member to remind her of her place. “He also wanted to know about imprinting and your sordid little love triangle with Sam and Emily.”

 

That got my attention. “Why would he ask about that?”

 

“You haven’t told him anything,” Jake accused, ignoring my question. “He’s so in the dark he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going.”

 

“Really?” That damned psychic cable had wrenched painfully all week, every time I deflected vamp-boy’s advances. I liked knowing that I was finally having some effect on him, too. My enjoyment must have shown on my face. The corners of Jake’s mouth drew down in disapproval and he shook his head.

 

“I never figured you for a tease, Leah.”

 

It was my turn to get angry. “Don’t you _dare_ judge me, Jacob Black,” I growled, giving him a hard shove in the center of his massive chest. He nearly toppled backward off the mower seat.  “You tried to put off telling Bella about imprinting on her baby girl for as long as possible. And just how old _was_ your imprint when you finally explained everything to her?”

 

My sarcasm shut him up. Jake had hit the jackpot in that respect and he knew it. He’d never had to explain anything to Renesmee. She’d just known. He’d never had to face the terrifying, soul-exposing conversation that Paul had with Rachel, or that Quil would one day have with Claire.

 

He shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. I felt a little bad for snapping at him. It wasn’t his fault that he suffered from severe testosterone brain-poisoning like all the other males in our pack.

 

Finally he sighed, looked up and raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, okay? You’re right. I haven’t really been in your shoes, so I don’t know how I would handle things in your position.”

 

“Thanks,” I grumbled grudgingly.

 

Quick amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Speaking of positions, I get the impression that Nahuel has a few he’d like to try with you.”

 

I crossed one arm over my breasts protectively, and slapped the other hand over my eyes. That wouldn’t hide my embarrassment, but at least I didn’t have to see his knowing smirk. “Yeah, I know,” I muttered. “He’s been trying to get in my pants ever since that night he took off on his own.”

 

“So give in already,” he said with a chuckle. “Now that’s one thing I can tell you I _would_ do if I were in your shoes and didn’t have a mind-reading future father-in-law to worry about.”

 

“I’m glad my sex life amuses you,” I said sourly. “But I’m not holding out on him to be a bitch, or because I care what anyone will think. I’m trying to make him want sex with me more than he wants to give up on fighting his father.”

 

I paused and swallowed hard, forcing the words out. “… more than he wants to die.”

 

Jake’s eyes widened. “ _What_?”

 

Part of me felt like I was betraying Nahuel by revealing to Jake what had happened on the beach. But if I couldn’t tell my Alpha, my best friend, about my imprint’s death wish, who could I tell? So I told him everything: Nahuel’s terror and despair that his presence in Forks would bring Joham down on us all. His conviction that the only way to protect us was for him to die. I even told him about the kiss and where Nahuel had wanted it to lead.

 

“I know it’s manipulative and bitchy and wrong to hold sex over his head, but I just can’t think of any other way to make him want to stick around,” I said, unable to meet Jake’s gaze. I turned my back on him and moved to stand in the doorway, looking back at the house. Through the kitchen window, I could see my mother and Nahuel, heads close together, intently discussing something.

 

Jake rose from the mower to stand behind me, his ham-sized hands settling warm and gentle on my shoulders. He gave me a slight shake. “You always sell yourself short. Why do you do that?” Frustration darkened his voice. “You don’t need to play some game to make him want to stay alive. _You_ are enough. I wish you could see that.”

 

I bowed my head, fighting against the wretched lump in my throat. “When you explained imprinting to him, he didn’t make the connection, did he?”

 

After a few moments of silence, Jake gave my shoulders a light squeeze and dropped his hands. I turned to face him. He shook his head regretfully, his dark eyes soft and sympathetic. I drew a shaky breath.

 

“I’m just focusing on keeping him alive long enough for us to kill his father,” I said, willing my voice to sound strong and determined. “Maybe when he’s not living in fear anymore, we can find some kind of understanding about the imprinting.”

 

He worried his lower lip between his teeth, studying me thoughtfully. “There are so many ways this game could backfire on you,” he said, anxiety lacing his tone. 

 

“I’m a big girl, Jake. I appreciate your concern, but I can take care of myself.”

 

I headed across the yard toward the back door. “Nahuel and I are never going to be a grand love story like you and Renesmee,” I said quietly over my shoulder. “That kind of thing … well, it’s just not for me, that’s all.”

 

As I reached the kitchen door, I heard his truck engine turn over. I didn’t watch him drive away.

 

It was a relief to have finally told Jake what happened on the beach at La Push. Of course, I’d skipped over two important truths I’d come to realize since that night. First, regardless of what Nahuel did or didn’t feel for me, no matter how much or how often he infuriated me, I _ached_ for him. The reason—whether it was the imprint or love—really didn’t matter at all. I was hooked, body and soul.

 

And the second truth, the more important one, was that I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.

 

SSW/SSW/SSW

 

Sure I bitched about it, but most of the time I was actually okay with being a werewolf. Turning into a powerful predator could be pretty cool. Plus, there were some great fringe benefits. I hadn’t been sick or injured in years. I could eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight. And my tits were seriously spectacular, the kind of spectacular that Hollywood starlets paid tens of thousands of dollars to achieve.

 

On the other hand, what good were supernatural powers if they couldn’t get you out of some of the more mind-numbing realities of being human? Like doing laundry. I’d rather scrub the entire bathroom with a toothbrush than do a single load of Seth’s sweaty, smelly clothes.

 

But it was my turn to do the laundry, which was why I was bent over our turn-of-the-century, top-load clothes washer, head and shoulders wedged inside the drum. I was trying to loosen a really stubborn sock that had knotted around the agitator. You’d think one stupid sock wouldn’t be a problem for a werewolf, but if anyone else had been home, I’d have called in reinforcements.

 

My curses reverberated loudly inside the machine. The smells of detergent and damp funkiness were overpowering. So I didn’t realize Nahuel was behind me until he groped my butt.

 

Startled, and scrambling to free myself from the washer, I moved backward too fast, whacking my head hard on the lip of the opening. Worse, my hair snagged on some sharp edge. I was stuck.

 

_Oh, gimme a freaking break!_

I couldn’t straighten up or reach the snag. I really couldn’t do anything except stand there with my (also spectacular) ass in the air. Hard to believe I was the same she-wolf who once mowed through Victoria’s army of savage newborns.

 

Of course, Nahuel took full advantage of my predicament. Without as much as a “hello,” he curved his body around mine, molding his broad chest and muscular abdomen against my back and rear.

 

His hands—those God-damned, wonderful hands—dove beneath my T-shirt, which was riding up onto my shoulders because of my bent-over posture. Five fingers splayed across my stomach, the long middle one slipping just beneath my waistband. The other hand slid higher. I gasped when those fingers brushed silkily against the side of my breast. Jake’s comment about positions flashed through my mind and I suppressed a shiver.

 

“Is something wrong, ñi piuque?” he asked. He’d been sprinkling his conversation with those foreign phrases ever since we returned from the beach. Thanks to the internet, I was pretty sure the words were Mapudungun, the native language of his Mapuche mother. I didn’t know their meaning, but I had no problem understanding the come-fuck-me tone behind them. 

 

“My hair is caught,” I offered breathlessly. I resisted an almost overpowering urge to grind my butt into his groin.

 

“Is that so?” He pressed his warm lips to the back of my neck, burying his nose in the hair at my nape. He inhaled deeply, as if he enjoyed my scent, and his tongue traced an intricate pattern, hot and wet, on my vertebrae. His voice dripped with saccharine sympathy. “Is it very painful?”

 

_Painful? Hell no. That feels great! Oh, he means my hair …_

“Hurts a little,” I managed to wheeze out. Between the washer pressing into my stomach and his hard-on nudging my ass, breathing was majorly difficult.

 

When his thighs pushed between mine, spreading them from behind, I knew it was time to end this. I drew breath to tell him to get the hell off me, to help me get out of this damn washing machine. Between the intake and the exhalation, however, I lost the power of speech.

 

His hand cupped my breast fully, cradling its weight in his palm. His long, magical fingers stroked oh-so-slowly across my nipple, then pinched deliciously. I was instantly soaked. If he slid my shorts down my legs right now, I’d let him do whatever he wanted. Lick every inch of me. Sniff me. Fuck me until I forgot my own name.

 

I was squirming desperately now, bucking against him, grasping behind me trying to touch some part of his body. Suddenly I was free, out of the washer, and flipped around to face him.

 

Before my brain could fully register my upright position, he pressed me back against the machine. His face was so close to mine that his intoxicating scent saturated my every breath. Muscular arms bracketed my body as he placed his hands on the washer on either side of me. I wanted them back where they belonged, on me. He gazed in my eyes for a moment, giving me a chance to protest, waiting just a fraction of a second for me to order him away.

 

When I remained silent, his eyes dropped to my breasts and a self-satisfied smile played at the corners of his mouth. Moving again with dizzying speed, he slammed the lid on the washer and hoisted me to sit on top of it. In the next instant, my T-shirt was gone and his hands were back on my naked breasts.

 

My breast-fondling experience was, admittedly, limited. There’d only ever been Sam and he was an ass man. So for most of the time I’d had breasts, I’d thought of them as just something that made me look good. Or that got in the way when I was bending over and unloading the shopping cart in the grocery store check-out line.

 

Nahuel made me _so_ glad I had tits, and even happier that he’d had the balls to finally get my shirt off. His long fingers stroked me gently, drawing sensual, slowly diminishing circles from the perimeter of my breasts in toward my nipples.

 

“Beautiful,” he murmured. He meant it, and for the first time in a long time, I believed it. His touch was worshipful, considerate. He wasn’t just caressing my breasts for his own pleasure, but for mine as well. I gripped the edge of the clothes washer and leaned forward, offering myself up in a way I’d never done before, a way I’d never imagined I would want to.

 

He removed his own shirt so quickly I didn’t even realize his hands had moved until he drew me against his perfectly sculpted chest. I whimpered—yes, _whimpered_ —at the erotic sensation of his hot skin moving slickly, silkily against my sensitized nipples. He whispered my name, and then lowered his lips to mine.

 

While his hands had covered a lot of territory since our encounter on the beach, he hadn’t really kissed me again. That first time, he’d been wild with anger and fear. He’d channeled pure lust and rage through his perfect mouth and tongue.

 

This kiss was as different from our first as we were from each other. His arms stole around me tenderly, as if he regretted the marks his hands had left on me before. His lips were sweet, almost chaste, against mine.

 

_What the fuck? I’m going up in flames and he’s giving me sweet? Oh hell no!_

 

Grabbing fistfuls of the soft black hair just above his ears, I tried to take control of the kiss and slide my tongue into his mouth. Instead of opening for me, he gently moved his lips away. Nestling his cheek against my throat, he pressed a soft kiss on my collar bone. His powerful arms curved around my back and he simply hugged me to him until our breathing calmed and fell into pace with each other.

 

Our first kiss had been about driving desire and desperation. This one had turned into something else entirely.

 

Five minutes ago he’d been crushing his erection against my ass and pinching my nipple. My breasts and stomach had tingled wherever my naked skin touched his. Yet now he was cradling me the way a child would cuddle a beloved teddy bear. He’d slingshot us both from crashing, screaming desire to tender, quite comfort in less time than it took me to get dressed in the morning.

 

The man was giving me emotional whiplash.

 

Confused but content, I sighed and closed my eyes. Wrapping my arms around his shoulders, I returned the embrace and savored the perfection of the moment. Of course, perfect moments never last, at least not for me.

 

Gradually, two sounds and two scents intruded on my bubble of bliss: a heartbeat, quick and frantic, that belonged to neither of us. Breathing, shallow and rapid, also not ours. The odor of cheap aftershave.

 

Nahuel gave no indication he noticed any of those things, but he must have been feeling the pressure of reality against our sphere of perfection as well. He burrowed his face into my shoulder, like a child who hopes the covers he pulls over his head will block out the sound of the morning alarm.

 

It was the second scent, the unmistakable tang of gun metal,  that forced my eyes open.

 

In full police uniform, Charlie Swan stood in the doorway of my mother’s laundry room. His left hand was bracing the impressive-looking gun that he clutched in his right. That gun was pointing at Nahuel.

 

My gasped “Oh, shit,” finally got Nahuel’s attention. He lifted his head and looked over his shoulder, but didn’t take his arms from around me. One look at Charlie, and Nahuel tightened his grip. I couldn’t blame him.

 

“Get your hands off her,” Chief Swan growled, taking a threatening step into the room. Suddenly, the laundry room felt very crowded. Charlie gestured with the gun, pointing to the corner of the room farthest from the washer. “Get over there. Put your hands on that wall. Make one funny move and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

 

Charlie had no way of knowing the danger he was in, but I did. Even as I opened my mouth to warn him off, to clear up whatever misunderstanding he thought he saw, I felt Nahuel tense minutely in my arms.

 

He moved too fast for me to see anything more than a blur. Being human, Charlie saw even less. Before Bella’s father had time to register that he’d been disarmed, before the sound of Nahuel’s low growl reached his ears, my imprint had him by the throat. He slammed Charlie against the wall. Charlie’s head met the faded wood paneling with a loud crack. He dangled, wheezing and gasping, in the air. With his other hand, Nahuel crushed the gun into scrap metal.

 

Lost, broken, frightened at first, then sweet, sexy and polite, Nahuel had made it easy in these past weeks for me to forget what he really ways. Easy to forget that he’d been born in blood. That death had held his perfect, beautiful hand from the moment he ripped his way from his mother’s womb.

 

The salty, metallic scent of blood reached my nostrils. Charlie was bleeding. A smudge of bright blood was visible on the wall where his head had met the paneling, and a trickle threaded from the corner of his mouth down his chin.

 

As a snarl curled his perfect lips away from his gleaming, sharp teeth, Nahuel brought Charlie’s purple face closer to his and inhaled deeply. Enjoying the bouquet before guzzling the wine. In that moment, I saw no trace of the man I’d started to believe was the other half of my soul. I saw only an aggressive vampire, and the wolf in me acted instinctively.

 

With Nahuel’s teeth just inches from Charlie’s jugular, I  phased and launched myself at my imprint.  When I hit him, he dropped Charlie. We hurtled through the laundry room door and into the kitchen. Rolling over each other, our bodies crashed into the kitchen table. The table toppled. Chairs splintered around us.  

 

Nahuel didn’t want to hurt me. That’s the only explanation for how I pinned him so quickly.

 

I used the sheer weight of my wolf form to hold him to the floor, my jaws clamped tightly around his throat. He trembled feverishly and his fingers gouged the linoleum beneath us, scrabbling to reach Charlie and his blood. But he made no move to throw me off.

 

Out of the corner of the eye closest to his face, I saw his wide, wild eyes . They were coal black, desperate and begging. His voice was a rattling hiss around the pressure of my hold.

 

“Don’t let go. Please, don’t let go.”

 

And suddenly I remembered what he’d said that night on the beach, how he was tired of being a monster. If I’d been in human form, I would have cried for him. I would have kissed every inch of his beautiful, terrified face and reassured him that I would _never_ let him go. But I was a wolf at the moment, and all I could manage was a low whine that I hoped he understood.

 

I focused on the laundry room door, where Charlie now stood,  swaying drunkenly . His uniform shirt was torn and livid purple bruises were beginning to appear on his throat just above his collar. Blood was smeared across his face. His hands, clinging to the door jamb for support, shook badly.

 

His eyes darted from Nahuel to me and back again, as if he couldn’t decide which of us was the more heinous monster.

 

Of course, he’d seen everything.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 - Reality

**Leah POV**

 

I’d never liked Charlie Swan.

 

Yeah, I know it wasn’t a nice way to feel about a guy who’d been my father’s best friend for as long as I could remember. When Dad died, Charlie was there for my family during those dark days. And like it or not, I had to admit he’d brought the sparkle back to my mother’s eyes. Good at his job, liked by the community he served, a devoted father, and friend to many on the rez, Charlie was just an all-around hell of a great guy.

 

For all those reasons, he rubbed me the wrong way. No one should be that great all the time. Now, I had another reason to dislike Charlie.  

 

_He had fucked up everything._

 

That poisonous thought chanted through my brain over and over as I crouched above Nahuel, my teeth still on his throat, watching Charlie watch us. The part of me that was afraid for Nahuel was wrestling with the part that was afraid _of_ him, of what he might do to Charlie if I let go. _Stalemate_.

 

God-damned Charlie Swan.

 

For six years, all the vampires and werewolves in Charlie’s life had done a cautious, frantic little dance around him. _Can’t let him know. Have to protect him from the truth. Charlie couldn’t handle knowing what we all really are. He’ll be safer if he doesn’t know._ And Charlie had been a willing partner in the dance, happily keeping his head buried firmly up his ass. Ignoring the blatant evidence that the people closest to him weren’t exactly _people_ at all.

 

“Trained investigator,” my ass. He didn’t ask questions. Not after Jake phased in front of him six years ago, giving him just a taste of the truth in hopes of winning Charlie’s silence. Not after meeting his granddaughter, knowing it was impossible for Bella, who had clearly _not_ been pregnant when she married Edward, to have given birth just a month later. Not even after watching that child grow up at a pace that was clearly unnatural. He could teach the Army a thing or two about “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

 

Now, the big, old, splintery paddle of _reality_ had just soundly smacked Charlie on his naked, self-deluding ass. Everything was totally screwed up now, thanks to Charlie. The only way things could have been worse was if I hadn’t been able to stop Nahuel.

 

If I’d been in human form I would have gagged on my anger. The stench of Nahuel’s fear was making my limbs shake and my head swim. I could feel his self-loathing radiating through our imprinting bond, leaving me a heartbeat away from total meltdown myself. Would this episode throw him into a tailspin? Would he lose whatever ground he’d gained in the past few weeks?

 

I had no idea what the hell I was going to do next. So I sat there on top of my imprint, my jaws still on his throat, and hated Charlie Swan almost as much as I’d once detested Sam.

 

When Seth walked into the kitchen, I’d never been happier to see the big blockhead in my life.

 

“Hey, Charlie! Didn’t know you were stopping by,” he said, stepping into the room with a welcoming grin on his face. He froze and took in the scene, shock warping his happy smile into a grimace. It must have been pretty mind-blowing: Nahuel prone on the floor with my jaws locked on his throat. Charlie, battered and bleeding, standing stupefied in the laundry room door. The debris of our kitchen table and chairs scattered on the floor around us.

 

Seth’s jaw went slack and he gaped at us for several seconds. From behind his broad back, Mom’s shocked gasp broke Seth’s trance.

 

“Oh my God!” she cried, her eyes racing from me to Charlie. I never knew watching someone else’s world crumble could be so painful, but my heart cracked when I saw the expression on my mother’s face. I could see in her beautiful eyes the realization that nothing would ever be the same, or sane, again. She’d just stepped into her worst nightmare. At the sound of her voice, Charlie’s eyes flashed to hers, but he said nothing. He didn’t look like he would be capable of speech for a while yet.

 

Who would have thought Seth would be the one to take charge? His voice was quiet, calm and commanding.

 

“Mom, why don’t you take Charlie into the bathroom and help him clean up?” he said, approaching Nahuel and me cautiously.

 

Maybe it was the tone of his voice, or just sheer amazement at Seth taking control, but my mother complied immediately. She went to Charlie silently, looped his arm over her shoulders and gently guided him down the hallway. Charlie was still so out of it he didn’t utter a word of protest.

 

When the sound of the bathroom door shutting echoed softly down the hall, Seth pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed. “Hey, man. We got a situation. Can you get here on all fours? Leah can explain while you’re running. Thanks.” He ended the call and looked at me. “Jake’s on his way. He’s going to phase and run, so you can fill him in on the way.”

 

Seth took another careful step toward us, as if he were unsure which one of us would freak out first. “Leah, you can let go of Nahuel now.” His voice was amazingly gentle and reassuring. Part of me was astonished that this was my kid brother talking. Another part of me was thinking “Fuck no, I’m not letting go.”

 

A low growl rumbled from my throat. Seth didn’t need to be in wolf form to know what that meant.

 

“Lee-lee, it’s okay,” he said calmly. “You can let Nahuel up. I’m going to take him outside to wait until Jake gets here. He’ll probably feel better if he’s out of the house right now, away from the blood.”

 

I rolled my eyes down to look at Nahuel, which was hard to do since my teeth were still locked around his throat. He did seem calmer. Was it because Charlie’s blood wasn’t oozing in front of him anymore? Or that someone was finally taking charge? Or maybe, I thought with a chill, he’d just given up. Still, the image of his feral, snarling face when he’d gone for Charlie’s throat burned behind my eyes. Would Seth be safe with him right now?

 

“It’s okay,” Seth repeated. He looked down at Nahuel. Then, as if my brother knew what I was thinking: “He’s not going to bite me. Right, man?”

 

Nahuel hadn’t looked away from me since the moment my teeth had closed around his neck. He didn’t now, either, and his reply was clearly meant as much for me as it was for Seth.

 

“I will not bite you, Seth,” he confirmed, his voice still hoarse from the pressure of my grip on his throat.

 

I slowly unclamped my jaws and moved off Nahuel’s body. Seth reached down, grabbed Nahuel’s hand and hoisted him to his feet. Nahuel looked weak and powerless next to my towering brother, two things that the past hour had proven he most definitely was not. Without another word, Seth steered him out the kitchen door.

 

Suddenly exhausted, I flopped on the floor right there in the middle of our kitchen, amid the debris of the table and chairs my father had bought my mother as an anniversary gift the year Seth was born. Holiday meals, intense family discussions, huge Sunday breakfasts, funeral planning—so much life, good and bad, had happened around that table. Now it was a symbol of the still-smoldering ruins of my life.

 

SSW/SSW/SSW

 

Sharing a pack mind makes explanations fast and simple. While I lay on the floor trying to pull myself back together, Jake phased and got the full replay of the whole horrifying scene. By the time he was done tabbing through my recent memories, he was striding through my kitchen door, pulling a T-shirt over his head.

 

“Why did Charlie pull his gun on Nahuel?” he asked, putting into coherent thought the confusion I’d been struggling with since I opened my eyes to see Charlie standing in the laundry room door.

 

Jake ducked into the laundry room, did a quick search, and came out carrying the least-dirty items he could find. He tossed them to me and turned his back so that I could have a semblance of privacy.

 

I phased where I sat and reached for the clothes. My heart spasmed when I saw the shirt he’d chosen. It was one of Nahuel’s hand-me-downs, an expensive, silky pullover in a rich brown that matched the color of his eyes. It smelled of him, cinnamon and spice, comfort and wanting. Swallowing hard, I yanked it over my head, stood and jerked on the shorts before answering.

 

“I don’t know,” I said. “He just showed up with his gun in his hand. Nahuel wasn’t doing anything that would justify Charlie’s actions.”

 

Okay, maybe that wasn’t completely true, at least from Charlie’s perspective. Jake already knew, thanks to our pack link, exactly what Charlie had walked in on. But I just couldn’t believe seeing me topless and clinging to a guy he didn’t know would inspire Charlie to wave a gun. It’s not like he was my father, trying to protect my virtue.

 

Jake was apparently thinking along the same lines. “You think maybe he was just over-reacting to seeing you and Nahuel … together … like that?” He began picking up pieces of the table and chairs, stacking the splintered parts in the corner near the back door. After a few moments, he answered his own question. “No, I just can’t see that. There’s something else going on and we need to know what it is before we tell Charlie anything.”

Like Seth, Jake was calm and confident. Gratitude swelled in my chest, bringing sudden, shameful moisture to my eyes. If anyone could fix this whole mess, it was Jake.

 

From the bathroom, I could hear the sound of running water, but no voices. Charlie and Mom weren’t talking. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. Jake turned and walked quietly down the hall, pausing outside the bathroom door. He knocked softly and called my mother’s name.

 

“Sue, can you and Charlie come into the living room?” Without waiting for her reply, he motioned for me to follow him. Like everything else in our house, our living room furniture was old but functional. The sleeper sofa was hard as a board, but my dad’s old leather armchair was plush and comfy, if you ignored the torn spots Seth had patched with duct tape. I took a corner of the couch and left the armchair for Charlie.

 

Mom and Charlie entered the room. The blood smear was gone from Charlie’s face and his torn uniform shirt had been replaced by one of Seth’s few button-down shirts. It was way too big for Charlie, giving him a little-boy look that did nothing for his dignity.

 

Jake gestured to the armchair. At first, it looked like Charlie would refuse to sit. Then, he glanced at me, aftershocks of fear flitting through his eyes. He sat. Mom dropped down on the couch, but wedged herself into the corner as far from me as she could get. Her body language stung; it screamed blame and anger. The acrid aftertaste of bitterness burned the back of my tongue.

 

“Charlie, how are you?” Jake’s tone was even and calm, as if he weren’t addressing a man who’d just had his perception of reality radically, violently obliterated.

 

“That’s a hell of a question for you to ask me,” Charlie snapped. I guessed his shock and fear were finally morphing into anger. “I have a few questions of my own. Just how many other werewolves are there besides you and Leah? And who the hell is that psycho that Leah was swapping spit with?”

 

Mom’s eyes flashed to me accusingly. My face felt like it was on fire, but I held my ground and glared at Charlie. “Who I ‘swap spit’ with is none of your damned business, Charlie,” I growled. Part of me wanted to believe that Charlie was just being an intrusive asshole. But deep down, my inner wolf was screaming that there had to be more to it than that. That Charlie was leaving something out.

 

Jake crossed his arms over his chest and studied Charlie for a moment, considering his next words. “Charlie, obviously there’s a lot more going on here than you were aware of,” he began. “A lot of it is stuff you’d be better off not knowing. Before I can answer any of your questions—and I’m telling you right now I can’t promise to answer all of them—I need to know why you pulled your gun on Sue’s house guest.”

 

Charlie chewed his mustache nervously, a habit that irritated the hell out of me. He glared at Jake for a long moment, apparently weighing whether he could get anything out of my Alpha by going into cop mode. The boy he’d been able to cow with police authority was long gone, however, grown into a man who was more than capable of standing up to Charlie’s badge-bullying.

 

“Fine,” he said, blowing out an exasperated sigh. “There was a murder in Port Angeles last night. Pretty gruesome. Victim had her throat ripped out. Body drained of blood. A witness gave a description that fit your boy.”

 

“That’s not possible,” I gasped, my mind whirling. “Nahuel was here last night, with us.”

 

Jake’s heavy brows drew down over his dark eyes and he shot me a warning look that clearly said “shut up.” His gaze returned to Charlie.

 

“So you came here looking for him? How did you know he was here?”

 

“I didn’t,” Charlie replied. “Didn’t come here looking for him, either. Got an anonymous tip at the station that a stranger fitting the suspect’s description was seen on the rez. I came here to warn Sue, Seth and Leah to keep their eyes open and their doors locked. When I got here, the kitchen door was wide open, but I didn’t see any cars in the driveway. Made me think someone had broken in and was still here. So I drew my weapon and came in.”

 

My mind raced. None of this made sense. The murder sounded like it could be the work of a vampire. But if that were true, how could there be a witness? What vampire would allow such a thing to _be_ witnessed, let alone leave the witness alive? And who could have reported seeing Nahuel on the rez? We’d been careful to keep him out of sight.

 

Charlie’s gaze turned to me. “Guess you know the rest,” he said, his tone dripping with accusation. My emotional kettle had been on slow simmer since Charlie parked his rump in my dad’s favorite chair. His blame-filled tone stoked the fire under that kettle, until I was one pissy word away from boiling over.

 

“So what, you just walk into our home waving a gun? This isn’t the Wild West and you’re not Wyatt Earp, Charlie,” I growled, struggling to get the words out around the rage steaming up through my throat. “You threated to shoot Nahuel!”

 

A mottled purple hue crept up Charlie’s face from the neckline of his borrowed shirt. “Yeah, well it looks like I was right to be suspicious. There’s a hell of a lot more going on here than I ever imagined,” he shot back.

 

I could feel my temper teetering, the thin thread of my self-control stretching. Charlie turned on my mother.

 

“I always knew you were keeping something from me.” He was shouting now, the fear and shock of the past hour finally finding an outlet and a target. Mom cringed and shrank further back into the couch cushions. Normally, she was more than capable of standing up for herself. Instead, she wilted under the heat of Charlie’s anger.

 

He pelted her with questions so quickly it was clear he wasn’t really interested in answers, only in venting. “Leah is like Jake? Is that it? A … a _werewolf_? Is Seth one, too? Are _you_? Did Harry know, or did you lie to him for years, too?” Charlie pushed to his feet, fury and stress etched in every line of his lanky frame. “And what the hell are you doing, letting that psycho stay in Harry’s house?”

 

It was the second time he’d used that word to refer to my imprint. My temper wasn’t going to let me sit by and listen to him say it again. Without knowing how I got there, I was suddenly on my feet and nose to nose with Charles Swan, top cop of Forks’ finest.

 

“Yeah, Charlie, I’m like Jake,” I hissed.

Charlie didn’t know _anything_ about fury. I’d cornered the market on pissed off years ago, and I was an expert at riding a wave of rage straight down into total disaster.

“I’m _just_ like Jake. So is Seth. And if you want to know what Nahuel is, why don’t you go talk to your daughter and son-in-law? Because Nahuel is _just_ like Renesmee.”

 

“Leah!” My mother gasped, her hands flying to cover her mouth as if she could somehow snatch back the words I’d just said.

 

The purple color drained from Charlie’s face, leaving his skin chalky white. A fine sheen of sweat erupted on his forehead. His eyes opened impossibly wide. I held my breath and counted my heartbeats, wondering how many would pass before Charlie would crash to the floor in cardiac arrest. His mouth opened and closed, as if he were trying to mimic one of the thousands of fish he’d pulled from the water over the years. His breathing became arrhythmic, intermittent, and then stopped for more seconds than I thought a human could go without oxygen.

 

For the briefest second, guilt flared in my gut. Just as quickly, it evaporated. There was no way I was going to let Charlie’s desire to stay in the dark where he thought it was safe threaten Nahuel in any way. _Time to get our head out of your ass, Charlie._

 

The fact that Charlie could pull himself together enough to speak at all said volumes about his character. I had to give him grudging respect for that.

 

“Jacob,” he rasped, “is there something you want to tell me?”

 

When Jake didn’t immediately respond, Charlie finally tore his eyes from mine and zeroed in on my Alpha. Hard to imagine he could look more appalled than he already did, but somehow he managed it. “Jake?” His voice actually cracked.

 

Jake was smart. He was cautious, diplomatic, patient … basically everything I could never hope to be. He knew exactly what was riding on his response to Charlie’s question. For sure he was furious at me for giving up Renesmee’s secret, but he wasn’t going to show it and let Charlie see a fissure in our united front. And he wasn’t going to take it on himself to decide what to tell Charlie, not without consulting with the leech in-laws first.

 

“Charlie,” he said carefully, using a tone doctors usually reserved for the most emotionally fragile patients, “I think you need to talk to Bella and Edward.”

 

Charlie didn’t say another word. He marched past Jake and out the front door, leaving it open behind him. The police cruiser’s engine turned over, and we heard the sound of tires tossing gravel into the air. Silent tears streaked down my mother’s cheeks. The atmosphere in the room had the same heavy, oppressive feeling it gets just before a thunderstorm rolls in.

 

Finally, Jake broke the silence, pulling out his cell phone and hitting the speed dial for Bella. “Well, hell. That didn’t go like I hoped it would.”

 

SSW/SSW/SSW

 

I found Seth and Nahuel behind the woodshed. Still shirtless, Nahuel was sitting with his back pressed to the wall, as if he needed the support to stay upright. His knees were bent slightly and his forearms rested on his thighs, hands loosely clasped in his lap. He looked almost as bad as he had the first time I saw him in the Cullen house.

 

Seth stood beside Nahuel, one shoulder pressed to the shed wall. Neither said a word as I approached. When I reached them and stopped, Seth gave me an encouraging smile and headed back to the house. I tried not to think about the cell phone conversation Jake was having right now with Bella and Edward. I’d never been high on their list of favorite werewolves, and I’m sure my name was rotating even further down that roster right now.

 

I stood in front of Nahuel, unsure of what to say. How did you comfort someone who nearly killed your wanna-be stepfather? Were you even supposed to try?

 

He didn’t look up at me, but his voice was clear and surprisingly steady when he spoke. “I am sorrier than I can say, Leah. Of course, Sue had told me about Charlie, but I did not realize who he was ….” He trailed off and looked up at me. I groaned at the remorse and guilt I saw swimming in his teak-toned eyes.

 

“When I saw the gun, when I smelled his blood, I lost control.”

 

_Captain Obvious,_ I thought. Instead, I said: “Yeah, I kind of got that.”

 

“If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have lost what little humanity I have. I would have murdered someone Sue loves and destroyed everything the Cullens have built here.” I hated the lost, resigned tone in his voice.

 

He looked down at his hands, those magnificent hands that such a short time ago had transported me to a very happy place. Like a little boy trying to occupy his mind while sitting in time out, he picked at a thumbnail, digging at his cuticle with a viciousness that was in direct contrast to his quiet, contrite tone.

 

“Of course, you will want me to leave now,” he said. “Sue will not want me in her home any longer. Perhaps the Cullens would be able to accept me. Or perhaps it would be better for me to leave Forks altogether. ”

 

Acute, searing pain stabbed through my chest, radiating outward from the latch-point of that damned psychic cable. “No!” I didn’t mean to shout. My voice, my breathing, the whole situation—everything seemed like it was slipping from my control.

 

He looked up from his self-abuse, his almond eyes wide, first with surprise and then with  what looked like might be the stirrings of hope. I was desperate to fan that spark.

 

I dropped to my knees in front of him, pushed his arms out of my way and climbed into his lap, right there in the dirt behind my father’s woodshed. Straddling his legs, I grabbed him by the ears.

 

“Stop. It. Right. Now.” I commanded, punctuating each word with a rough shake. I hated the taint of hysteria that I could hear edging into my voice. “You are not fucking going _anywhere_. I won’t allow it. Do you understand?”

 

Relief dawned on his beautiful face, and I thought he might kiss me again. I _wanted_ him to kiss me again. Instead he crushed me to his chest and buried his face against my neck. He gripped me so tightly his arms shook, so tightly he’d have cracked my ribs if I’d been a human woman.

 

Then again, if I’d been human, I’d be running in the opposite direction right now, wouldn’t I? I’d have split the first time he admitted—in a roundabout way—that he’d once fed on humans. I’d have screamed bloody murder when he tried to kill my mother’s boyfriend.

 

But I was a werewolf, and he was my imprint. So instead of all the things a human woman would do, I simply wrapped my arms around him and returned his embrace.

 

“Thank you. Thank you.” He crooned the words over and over again into my shoulder, his voice a raw, ragged whisper. “Ñi piuque, thank you.” Was he thanking me for not sending him away? Or for stopping him from killing Charlie? Maybe both.

 

Jake’s shout and the thudding of two sets of footsteps broke us apart. I climbed off Nahuel’s lap and was on my feet by the time Jake rounded the corner of the woodshed with Seth two steps behind him.

 

“Alice had a vision,” he barked, in full Alpha mode. “Charlie’s on his way to confront Edward and Bella. An intruder is going to attack his car on the way. She thinks it’s one of Joham’s newborns.”

 

Nahuel rose and stood beside me, seemingly unaffected by his father’s name. Maybe I’d actually been able to head off his back-sliding.

 

“We’re closer to the attack scene than the Cullens. We’ll get there first, but we have to go now,” Jake said, tossing his cell phone to Nahuel. “You too. We need someone who can stay on the phone with Alice while we run. “When we get there, you stay back, out of the fighting. Let us handle this.”

 

We phased on the run. Beside me, Nahuel moved with fluid grace and speed, effortlessly keeping pace. After the emotional turmoil of the past few hours, running was a release. I felt the tension melt away from my muscles, replaced by that powerful readiness that I always felt before a fight.

 

I couldn’t take back the words that I’d shouted at Charlie, words that had changed everything for everyone. All I could do was run, and hope we got there in time to save the man my mother loved.


	10. Run

**Leah POV**

 

_… myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault …_

Self-blame pounded through my head, beating in counterpoint to the thud of three sets of paws as Seth, Jake and I raced through the towering trees. Beside us, Nahuel’s footfalls raised quiet splashes on the soggy forest floor. The morning’s drizzle had turned into a steady rain—gotta love Washington. The background static of rainfall muted all other sounds, but it couldn’t overpower my inner monologue.

 

My initial relief at actually _doing_ something—instead of just waiting for Joham to make a move—had faded fast. Its rapid retreat left a whole lot of room for guilt to move in, and I was wallowing in it. I didn’t regret forcing Charlie to face the truth about his family. But even I had to admit that my delivery and timing, less than an hour after he’d nearly had his throat ripped out by a half-vampire, were not the best.

 

Charlie was unknowingly speeding toward a rendezvous with a savage newborn, and my big mouth had set him on that course. If he were killed because of me, no treaty, no ties of familial affection, would be enough to keep Bella, Edward, and possibly even Renesmee, from coming after me. The wolf packs would have no choice but to intervene. The peace Jake had worked so hard to nurture over the past six years would be over, all because of my temper.

 

I would have fucked things up even worse than Charlie had.

 

_… myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault …_

_Cut the crap, Leah._ Jake’s reprimand sliced cleanly through my mental self-flagellation. _Keep your head in the game. Alice said we’d get there in time._

_In time for what, though?_ Seth wondered, replaying our pack memory of Alice’s frantic call to Jake.

 

Alice had seen Charlie decide to confront Bella and Edward at the Cullens’ house. She had seen the newborn’s decision—although not the motive behind it—to attack Charlie’s cruiser on an isolated stretch of highway. Her vision went blank, however, immediately after the newborn made contact with Charlie’s car.

 

_That’s because we get there and block her vision,_ Jake insisted. _That’s the only explanation. She can’t see what happens next because we’re there with Nahuel and she can’t see around us. We’ll be in time._

Unaware of our mental conversation, Nahuel moved fluidly and gracefully beside us. I wondered if he felt uncomfortable being around three giant wolves, if the smell of wet wolf was offensive to him. Was he afraid of the coming confrontation? What if Joham showed up? I knew Nahuel wasn’t ready to face his father, the beast who had tortured him and murdered his aunt.

 

Jake’s phone rang in Nahuel’s hand. He answered it without breaking stride, his voice even and smooth. “Yes.” He hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt before we left the house, and I couldn’t help but admire the lithe movement of muscle beneath his coffee-and-cream skin. Seth caught that observation and his astonishment rang through our pack link. I ignored him. By now, even my bone-headed brother had to know something was up between Nahuel and me, but I sure wasn’t going into it with him right now.

 

Nahuel listened for a few seconds, then ended the call. “Alice says the newborn has decided on a different route, one that will intersect Charlie’s path sooner. Edward and Bella are on their way, but will not make it in time. We need to be faster.”

 

_Want me to?_ I asked Jake. He knew I’d been holding back to keep pace with him and Seth. I was smaller than my hulking pack brothers and possibly less strong because of it (although I would never admit it to them), but the trade-off was that I was also a lot faster. I could get to the scene well before they could. I probably wouldn’t be able to take out the newborn by myself, but I would be able to protect Charlie long enough for the big boys to arrive. That could make all the difference.

 

Jake thought it over for less than a second. _Yes. Take the highway._

I didn’t question his order. I’d move faster if I was making a straight run and not dodging trees. We’d just have to hope that I wouldn’t be seen. I broke left, quickly leaving my pack brothers and my imprint behind. I thought I heard Nahuel shout my name, but I didn’t slow my pace. Back at my house, before phasing, Jake had given Nahuel strict orders to hang back and stay out of the fighting. I had to have faith that Nahuel would do as he’d been told, that Seth and Jake would take care of him. And I had to seize the opportunity to make up for my fuck-up by saving Charlie.

 

We’d been running parallel to the highway, and my paws hit rain-darkened macadam less than a minute after I left the guys behind. With nothing in front of me but open road, I picked up speed, pushing everything else from my mind but the mechanics of running.

 

_Front paws touch ground, push asphalt under and behind. Hind paws whip forward, strike down, propel. Tail held just so for balance and stability. Ears flat, minimizing wind resistance. The abrasion of asphalt against paw pads. The layered scents of tar, exhaust, rain and faintly, but growing stronger, Charlie._

 

I was so focused on my movement that I almost ran up the tail pipe of Charlie’s cruiser before I realized I’d made it. The newborn was nowhere in sight. I flanked the car, moving quickly to run beside the driver’s side door. I’m not sure I had any kind of plan, but Charlie must have seen me out of the corner of his eye. His head swiveled to the left, his startled gaze locking on mine.

 

Maybe the surprise of seeing a huge, soaked wolf running beside his car, its eyes at a level with his, freaked Charlie out. Maybe he didn’t realize it was me. Whatever the reason, he jerked the car to the right, away from me. The right front tire skidded off the wet pavement, picking up dirt and gravel from the shoulder of the road and spraying it into the air.

 

Plowing through that shower of stone and grit, the newborn struck. It hit the passenger’s side of the cruiser with a sound and a shockwave as loud and powerful as a sonic boom.

 

Like something out of the pivotal chase scene of a bad action movie, everything slowed down and played out in agonizing detail. I saw the right side of the cruiser crumple from the impact and both front-seat airbags inflate. The momentum sent Charlie’s head crashing against the driver’s side window, which shattered with a loud crack. The car lurched toward me as the newborn continued to push it across the highway.

 

_Shit! Move!_

I coiled my hindquarters and jumped. I managed to get up and over the roof of the car just as the newborn’s blow pushed the heavy vehicle over the pavement where I’d been running. My claws scrabbled on the rain-slicked roof. The sickeningly sweet stench of vampire assaulted my nostrils. I saw a flash of hate-filled, blood-red eyes just before I slid down the other side of the car tail-first.

 

Right on top of the newborn.

 

And holy crap, was it big. I mean, bigger-than-Emmett _huge_. Bigger than that Volturi guard that Aro always sent to do his dirty work. Was there such a thing as steroids for leeches? Because if there was, this undead fucker was definitely on them.

 

I didn’t have time to think or plan or strategize. I didn’t even have time to bend over and kiss my ass good-bye. As soon as my fur made contact with the newborn’s cold, hard flesh, I began clawing and biting, twisting and squirming, desperately trying to sink my teeth into it without allowing it to get a hold on me.

 

The scent of Charlie’s blood soaked the air now, overpowering the dank odor of the rain. A small part of my brain wondered how badly he was hurt. The bigger part realized that his blood was making the newborn crazy, and I could possibly use that to my advantage. The distraction was just enough to give me a tiny opening, and I sank my fangs into the top of the tick’s skull. This thing was so damn big that I thought for a second it would ignore me completely. I planted all four paws on its shoulders and pulled for all I was worth.

 

I actually thought I might be making progress toward popping its head off. Until the damn thing reached up over its head and grabbed my forelegs just below my shoulders. Icy fingers dug into my flesh, easily piercing through fur and hide.

 

The newborn backed away from the cruiser, seeking room to maneuver. Snarling, it started to lift me up and forward, trying to bring me over its head, in front of it. I remembered what had happened to Jake when one of Victoria’s newborns had gotten its arms around him. If this leech got me in front of it, it would crush me. The situation was now the true definition of a deadlock—we were locked together and one of us was definitely going to end up dead. Unfortunately, it was starting to look like that would be me.

 

Stomach-churning pain radiated out from my shoulders and through my body, but I refused to give up my bite on the leech’s scalp. I spread my toes and tried to dig into its shoulders with my claws, but I felt my body being drawn forward. I probably had seconds left before it got me where it wanted me. Had I bought enough time? Maybe I’d delayed the newborn just enough to let the others arrive before it could get to Charlie.

 

My paws lost their grip on the blood-sucker’s shoulders. I was out of time. As the newborn pulled me forward, one thought crystalized through the chaos in my head: Would Nahuel finally feel the ache of that damned psychic cable when my dead body was at the other end of it?  

 

 

Something hard, heavy and hot slammed into me painfully, ripping me away from the newborn. Clumps of my fur and skin stayed behind in the blood-sucker’s hands as I was torn from its grasp. I tumbled tail over teacups across the highway. I landed belly-down on the grassy shoulder of the road, with that heavy, warm missile on top of me. Electricity sang along my nerve endings everywhere that weight touched my body.

 

Cinnamon and spice. Comfort and longing. _Nahuel_.

 

Apparently, the cavalry had arrived. Across the pavement, Jake and Seth were engaging the newborn. It was already missing one arm; as big as it was, it was still no match for two wolves the size of my Alpha and kid brother. Each had another limb clenched in his teeth, slowly tearing the appendages off.

 

Suddenly, Edward was there. He sprang atop the newborn, taking the same position I’d held just moments before. I saw his teeth flash briefly, his head dip toward the other vamp’s throat. With a sound like ripping metal, the newborn’s head separated from its shoulders, and the hulking body collapsed, twitching, to the ground.

 

Seth and Jake stepped away, each still holding a severed limb. Seth spat his out on the asphalt, choking and gagging like a cat trying to hack up a hairball.

 

Bella had already ripped the door off the mangled cruiser. I could hear her low, urgent voice telling Charlie to hold on. I doubted he heard her. Carlisle’s Mercedes lurched to a halt beside the wreck, Renesmee behind the wheel. Carlisle leapt from the passenger’s side, medical bag in hand. He rushed to Bella’s side. Renesmee left the driver’s side door open and flew into Edward’s arms.

 

_Good work, Leah._ Jake and Seth were calmly dragging the dismembered pieces of newborn to the cruiser, pushing the fragments under the car. I knew when Charlie was free of the wreck and on his way to the hospital, they would light those pieces and let the fire destroy all the evidence, including the mangled car. _You okay?_ Jake asked.

_Mostly._

I hurt all over and the two raw patches on my front legs oozed blood. Nahuel had moved off me and was now running his hands over my legs and body, searching for breaks and wounds. Still dazed, I wondered why the scent of my blood wasn’t bothering him. Maybe he didn’t care for eau du dog? Though I knew his touch was meant to be purely clinical, my flesh tingled beneath the fur everywhere his hands trailed their current over me. _Jesus. Even when I’m a dog, he has this effect on me._

Suddenly, Carlisle was there, gently pushing Nahuel out of the way. His examination was quick and efficient.

 

“No broken bones, although you probably have a bruised rib or two,” he said, then chuckled. “I’d say to go home and put some salve and bandages on those abrasions, but knowing wolf metabolism, I expect they’ll be healed by the time you get there. You need to rest, but you should be fine in a few hours.”

 

Edward’s designer shoes appeared in front of me and I looked up at him, expecting anger and accusation. I figured I deserved at least a little of both. Of course, he picked that thought out of my mind.

 

“You’re right that you deserve my anger,” he said, but his voice was mild. “Charlie’s ignorance was for his own safety. You had no right to take that from him. Thanks to you, it’s going to be impossible to keep him in the dark any longer.”

 

His eyes flicked to Nahuel for a second, then back to me. I held my breath, waiting for him to give me away. But when he spoke again, his reference to my imprint was so veiled I was sure no one else would have caught it. “Still, your actions were … understandable. And your quick intervention helped save Charlie’s life. Carlisle says Charlie’s wounds are superficial. So let’s call everything even, shall we?”

 

And then he was gone, with Carlisle, loading Charlie’s unconscious form into the Hummer. I was relieved that he wasn’t going to hold my paws to the fire over all this. I wasn’t sure that Bella would be so forgiving, however. She shot me an angry glare before jumping into the backseat of the vehicle beside Charlie and Carlisle. Edward left a long strip of rubber on the road as he peeled away. _Typical Cullen driving._

_All right, Leah, you and Nahuel head back to your house,_ Jake directed. _Send Sue to the hospital. She’ll want to be with Charlie. Seth, Ness and I will clean up here. Then we’ll head over to the hospital, too. I’m sure Bella and Edward will want me there when Charlie wakes up._

_Will do, boss man._ The aftermath of the crisis was finally hitting me. I was shaky and exhausted with the aftershock. I wanted to wash the newborn’s stink off, and my body needed a nap to facilitate my accelerated healing. I stood up, and Nahuel rose beside me, his hand lightly brushing my back. For the first time since he tore me from the newborn’s hands, I looked at his face … and yipped softly in surprise at what I saw there.

 

He was pissed. Royally pissed. White-lipped, narrow-eyed, nostril-flaring, shaking with rage _pissed off_.

 

_What the hell did I do this time?_

Or course, being without human vocal chords at the moment, I couldn’t ask him what his problem was. His fury-filled eyes flicked to the others. Jake and Seth had finished stacking tick parts under the wreck. Renesmee had moved the Hummer several hundred yards down the road, away from the crash site, and was walking back with a lighter in her hand.

 

Nahuel’s angry glare returned to me. Without a word, he twisted his fingers into the fur between my shoulder blades and tugged me toward the trees in the direction we’d come from. Back toward the reservation. Toward home.

 

SSW/SSW/SSW

 

Mom was just climbing into her beat-up old Buick when we stepped out of the trees. When she saw us, she paused, one hand on the car door, and watched us approach. Her eyes were wary, and I hated the guarded expression on her face. I had to talk to her before she left. I had to apologize and tell her myself that Charlie was going to be okay. I phased without a thought for my nudity and launched myself into her arms.

 

Her arms closed around me immediately and relief swept through my body. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” I babbled. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I was just so mad. I’ve ruined everything, but Charlie’s going to be okay. I’m so sorry ….”

 

She shushed me and then pushed back out of my arms. She gently cupped my cheek, waiting for me to meet her eyes. “I know, Leah. I’m sorry, too, for how I reacted. Everything is going to be fine. I’m going to the hospital to be with Charlie.” Her eyes drifted over my shoulder and her body stiffened. Heat surged up my spine as I realized Nahuel must have come to stand very close to us.

 

“Sue, I have far more to apologize for than Leah does.” His voice was low, rough and regretful. “I am ashamed by the lack of control I displayed with Charlie. I have no right to ask for your forgiveness right now, but I hope you will give me the chance to regain your trust.”

 

Mom’s lips pressed into a tight line, and the wary look was back in her eyes. She didn’t speak, but gave him a curt nod before returning her gaze to me. She had battled a lifetime of prejudices to accept Nahuel for my sake. I couldn’t blame her if his attack on Charlie had revived her innate distrust of vampires. My imprint would have his work cut out for him rebuilding his friendship with my mother.

 

“You need to deal with this,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t referring to my temper—or at least not _just_ my temper. She pulled me down to press a kiss on my forehead, climbed into the car and slammed the door. Without another word, she drove away.

 

Although my back was to him, I was intensely aware of how close Nahuel was to my very naked body. I still didn’t know what had made him so angry back at the crash scene. But the encounter with Mom seemed to have distracted him, and I saw an opportunity to dodge another confrontation with him.

 

I drew a shaky breath and barked over my shoulder. “I’m going to take a shower.” I double-time marched into the house, giving him a brief view of my amazing ass. I paused long enough to grab some clothes from my room before slipping into the bathroom. Nahuel appeared to still be outside, and I debated with myself for half a second before deciding to lock the bathroom door behind me.

 

The hot water felt wonderful on my sore muscles, and Carlisle had been right; the wounds on my arms were almost completely healed already. I’d just finished the first round of lather, rinse and repeat when I heard a loud metallic popping sound. _What the hell was that?_ I reached for the shower curtain to take a peek … and squeaked like a scared little girl when the curtain was yanked aside.

 

Nahuel stood with his knees against the low side of the tub, the broken bathroom doorknob in one hand and the shower curtain, now ripped off its rings, in the other. Droplets of water bounced off my body and onto his face and naked chest. I couldn’t look away as one lucky drop traveled down his perfect abdomen to pool in his navel. My eyes shot up to his and my breath caught.

 

The anger was back, but there was also something else there in his eyes. Something I hadn’t seen since that night on the beach: raw, driving lust. 

 

The doorknob clattered on the bathroom floor. His eyes never left mine as he stepped into the tub, still wearing his jeans and shoes. Feeling crowded and breathless, I backpedalled a slippery step until the shower wall blocked me. Water spilled down over Nahuel’s dark hair and face, but he made no move to wipe the drops out of his eyes.

 

_Christ, he’s even more gorgeous wet!_

 

He continued to press forward until my naked, quivering body was firmly sandwiched between his delicious heat and the coolness of the tile at my back. In typical Nahuel fashion, his nimble, warm hands immediately began roving over my skin.

 

My arms were squashed between us, bent at the elbow. Without actually deciding to do so, I dropped the soap and bath sponge I’d been holding. I ached to touch him, and I pressed my tingling palms to his chest. Then it occurred to me that there was a much better part of my body—okay, _two_ parts, really—that I’d like to rub against his chest. Before I could act on that thought, however, I realized he was saying something. I shook my lust-addled head, trying to focus on his words.

 

_Oh yeah, that’s right. He’s still pissed at me._

“You left me behind.” His voice was a lethal hiss, just barely audible over the rushing noise of the shower. His hands slid roughly up my sides, trailing wet, scalding heat from my hips to my ribs. “You gave me a promise and then left me without fulfilling it.”

 

_What’s he talking about? What promise?_

 

“If I am not allowed to die, neither are you. Not until you have kept your promise.” My legs had been shaking since he stepped into the tub with me, and they completely gave out when his thigh pushed between mine. He pressed his leg forward, taking my full weight as I rode that magnificent, muscled thigh. The friction of his jeans against my sensitive flesh sent waves of desire spiraling through my entire body. Was it possible to spontaneously combust when you were soaking wet?

 

_WHAT promise?_

 

“If you intend to take such risks with your safety, I am unwilling to wait any longer.”

 

His hands continued moving, one snaking up to span my jaw, holding my head immobile. The other slid behind me to cup my ass and pull me more firmly against the bulge in his jeans. Even through the wet material I could feel his heat. I was gasping now, gulping in lungful after lungful of his spice-scented breath. When he spoke again, I barely registered his words before his mouth seized mine and reality fell away in a shower of flame.

 

“I will no longer accept ‘not now’ as your answer.”

 

_Oh! THAT promise._

 


	11. Heaven’s in Here

**Leah POV**

I could have quibbled.

 

Even as Nahuel’s mouth devoured my resistance, even as desire swamped my senses—I had it in me to point out that I’d never really _promised_ him sex. As every nerve ending fired simultaneously with the sheer, raw need to merge my body with his, a caustic little voice at the base of my brain stem shrilled that I’d made no such pledge, that I was under no obligation to let him fuck me.

 

I acknowledged that voice: _Yes, I’m a bitch. But I’m not a stupid bitch._

 

I wanted him, and I was done fighting this. What he was doing with his hands and mouth made it difficult to remember why I’d ever thought I needed to hold him off in the first place.

 

With the five functioning brain cells I had left, I reasoned that maybe Jake was right. Maybe I _could_ be enough to hold Nahuel here. After all, he’d risked his own life, overcome his fear of everything connected to his father, to rescue me from the newborn’s claws. He must feel something, right?

 

I could tell the exact moment Nahuel realized he’d won. He shivered against me, and I could feel his angry tension slough away with the tremor. His hands stilled, his lips left mine and he pulled back just far enough to allow me to refocus on his eyes. They were dark, hungry and triumphant. His sensual lips curled into a knowing smile.

 

I snaked my hands into his hair and tried to draw his mouth back to mine, but he resisted, watching me, as if waiting to see what I would do next. I settled for lapping up the drops of water clinging to his jawline, working my way down his neck. I bore down on his thigh, craving more of the delicious friction. Now that I’d made my choice, I couldn’t get close enough, fast enough.

 

I was twisting like a contortionist, trying to lick his chest while still pressing as much of my naked skin against his as possible. I gave up my hold on his head and fumbled at the waistband of his jeans. He chuckled—a throaty, smug sound—and his long fingers wrapped around mine, stilling my hands.

 

“Patience, ñi piuque,” he laughed, nuzzling the top of my head. “I have no intention of taking you quickly against the shower wall like an impatient adolescent.”

 

With that vampire speed that I always somehow under-estimated, he turned off the water, drew my other leg around his waist, and had us out of the shower and down the hallway before I could get my arms around his neck to hold on. I heard my bedroom door slam shut behind us just before he dropped me, soaking wet, onto my bed.

 

Dazed, I sat up, wiping water from my eyes and wondering why the hell he wasn’t already on top of me.

 

He laughed again at my dazed expression. His eyes never left my face as his hands moved to the waistband of his jeans. The slow, descending whisper of that zipper was hypnotic. I knew from experience that getting out of wet denim was not easy, but like everything else he did, Nahuel made it look graceful and sexy as hell. I watched his jeans slither down his long, muscular legs, pooling at his feet. His sopping boxers quickly followed with a soft splat on the wooden floor. My eyes traveled back up his body, snagging when they reached crotch level. I drew a low, appreciative gasp through my teeth.

 

_Wow._ Clearly, I was not the only one eager for this.

 

I didn’t even realize I was climbing off the bed and reaching for him until Nahuel held up a hand. “Patience,” he repeated, stepping slowly away from the puddle of wet denim. “You have kept me waiting a very long time. I intend to take my time enjoying you.” His words sent a wave of joint-loosening desire through my body, and I sank back on the bed, my knees too weak to stand.

 

He stalked forward, stopping when his legs brushed the side of the bed. Slowly, like the predatory cat he was named for, he climbed onto the bed. He crawled over me, and I fell back, the heat of his body pressing me down onto the mattress as surely as if he’d put his hands on me.

 

That snotty little mind-voice spoke up again and popped out of my mouth before I could silence it. “Not _that_ long. Barely a week.”

 

He paused above me, something I couldn’t quite identify flickering briefly in the depths of his golden brown eyes. Hazily, I tried to put a name to that ghost of emotion, but it was almost impossible to think of anything beyond the electricity crackling in the air between us. It seemed like that flicker could be important.

 

For the first time since he’d interrupted my shower, he avoided meeting my eyes. “You are wrong. I have waited more than a hundred years for you.”

 

He caught my gasp with his lips, consuming my questions before I could give them voice, stripping me of any thoughts other than the desire to feel him inside me. I writhed beneath him, sure this luscious heat would burn me to ash if he wasted too much time with foreplay.

 

For days he’d been teasing me with tantalizing touches, copping a feel every chance he got. Now that I was giving him full access, he was progressing frustratingly, torturously slow. His tongue wove lazy, exploratory swirls around mine. Poised above me on his hands and knees, he held his body inches from mine, but even that wasn’t close enough for me. When he pulled his mouth from mine and began scattering silky kisses down my throat, I groaned and clutched at his shoulders. I was so crazed to touch him I didn’t know where to put my hands first.

 

His breast-fondling session this morning had been one of the most erotic experiences of my life, but the sensation of his lips on my breast, well that was just life-altering.  A low rumble vibrated against my skin as he drew my nipple into his mouth.

 

_Is he … purring?_

 

Nahuel shifted his weight to the side and lowered himself to the mattress, aligning his body beside mine, giving his hands and lips better access. Vamp-boy was apparently a sexual multi-tasker, because as his tongue caressed my nipple, his hand moved south. Feather-light, he traced a twisting path down my abdomen, circling my navel before flattening his broad palm just above the low hairline.

 

I was panting now, digging my fingers into his tautly muscled shoulders, anticipation singing through my veins. His lips left my nipple with a soft sucking sound and he laid his head on my stomach, watching the movement of his own hand as he continued his explorations.

 

When one long finger slid into my slick folds, my eyes rolled back into my head and I moaned my encouragement. He paused and withdrew his finger. _What? Nonononono! Put it back!_

My head snapped up and my eyes opened to find him studying the wetness on his finger. I propped myself up on my elbows as his questioning eyes found mine.

 

“You are wet.” It was somewhere between a question and a statement. An improbable mixture of wonder and hunger saturated his voice.

 

I was confused. A bizarre, unbelievable thought occurred to me, and I wanted to discount it. He was a hundred-fifty years old and beautiful beyond belief. Surely, there was no way I was right, but his bafflement forced the words out of me. “Have you never … _done_ this … before?”

 

Chagrin swarmed over his perfect features, and if his coffee-and-cream skin tone would have allowed it, I was sure he would have blushed. “Many, many times,” he replied too quickly. I arched an eyebrow at him and waited one beat. Two. Three.

 

“With female vampires,” he continued, looking away from my eyes. “I have never been with a human woman before.”

 

I’d seen him enraged, terrified, despondent, aroused and even playful, but I’d not seen Nahuel embarrassed until this moment. Though my body still burned with lust, that damned psychic cable was tugging plaintively, demanding that I ease his discomfort.

 

“That’s okay,” I told him, trying to give him my best sexy-but-reassuring smile. “We’re even; I’ve never been with a half-vampire before.”

 

A boyish grin broke across his flawless face and my heart soared. I gestured toward his damp fingers. “This is normal, you know. It’s just my body’s reaction to yours. Is this alright?” Hoping he wouldn’t find my humanness disgusting.

 

He dropped his head back to my stomach, laughing, burrowing his nose against my abdomen. “It is very alright. I am not ignorant of normal human physiology. I have just never experienced it first-hand before. I did not realize it would be so very … arousing.”

 

His fingers returned to their exploration, and in seconds he had my body straining and humming again. Passion apparently hadn’t completely overwhelmed his curiosity yet. He repositioned himself so that he lay between my spread legs, bringing his eyes level with his fascinating discovery. His hot hands gently pressed my thighs apart.  I was totally exposed, on display for his probing, and I probably should have been at least a little annoyed at being treated like a science experiment during such an intimate moment. But everything he did felt erotic to me. Everything about Nahuel drew me in.

 

With one hand he gently massaged my trembling thigh. The fingers of his other hand were now coated with my moisture. Part of me wanted to just give myself over to the sensations those clever fingers were creating, to let my eyes clench shut and my head fall back. But if I did that, I would miss watching the play of awe and lust on his beautiful face. It was a sight I wanted to savor and remember for the rest of my life.

 

Slowly, he slid one long finger fully inside me. I was no virgin, but there’d been no one since Sam. Body parts that had been dormant for six years were leaping to life, and the delicious stretching felt as new and intoxicating as my first time. When my inner muscles spasmed around his finger, his breathing faltered. He lowered his face toward the spot where his fingers were working their magic and inhaled deeply. He muttered something I couldn’t understand, then pinned me with his heated gaze.

 

“I will never tire of that fragrance, not if I spend a hundred years savoring it,” he whispered. “I wonder … do you taste as good?”

 

He dipped his lips to kiss me intimately, his tongue replacing his fingers. Sam and I had been together two years, and this was something he’d never expressed any desire for.  He’d done it once or twice, but it had always felt like something he was doing as a favor to me, rather than an act we could both enjoy. Nahuel delved between my thighs enthusiastically, lapping and sucking like a starving man who’d just been served a four-course gourmet meal.

 

With just a few strokes of his tongue across my sensitized flesh, the coil of tension that had been slowly winding tighter and tighter contracted once, twice and then snapped. Pleasure blazed outward from the point where his lips met my skin, burning through every nerve ending, consuming coherent thought, blasting my awareness into the stratosphere. As if from a great distance, I heard my own voice shouting my delirium.

 

Slowly, drifting like smoke above embers, I returned to consciousness. You would think after such a mind-shattering orgasm, I’d be exhausted, or at the very least satisfied. But my need for Nahuel was simply too intense to be quelled so quickly and easily. I wasn’t content, wasn’t done—not even close. When the pleasure receded, it left behind an overwhelming physical and emotional craving to feel him inside me.

 

Nahuel was still resting between my thighs, stroking my quivering flesh tenderly, cautiously, obviously waiting to see how quickly I’d recover so he could begin again. I thrust my hands between my thighs, sank my fingers into his hair and pulled. Startled, he raised his head and met my eyes. What he saw there must have pleased him, because he pushed my legs farther apart and levered himself up to kneel between them. He bent at the waist to capture my lips again; the rapture of his mouth on mine instantly reignited the fire in my body. He draped my legs over his thighs and the tip of his erection finally nudged against me.

 

_At last!_

 

But vamp-boy wasn’t done driving me mad. I wanted him to plunge into me, to fuck me hard and fast. Instead, he seemed determined to draw things out. He pushed forward oh-so-slowly, barely stretching me before withdrawing for a heartbeat, only to resume his excruciatingly slow invasion.

 

I’m not a patient woman, and Nahuel was making me crazy. Frustration bowed my back, forcing my pelvis against his, and arching my body off the bed. I felt frenzied with desire so intense it was almost painful. I clutched at his hard thighs and groaned. “Christ, baby. You’re killing me.”

 

And that fast, he was gone, off the bed and across the room, slamming his back against my bedroom door.

 

I flopped on my bed like a turtle flipped on its back, desperate and powerless, feeling fatally foolish.

 

I don’t know how long it took my mind to wade through the haze of desire that had consumed my senses. Was it seconds, minutes or more? I only know it had been late afternoon when Nahuel broke the bathroom door, and when I surfaced to find him gone from my body, twilight had shrouded the room.

 

I sat up, searching the darkened room for my imprint. He was crouched with his back pressed against the door, knees drawn up, head buried in his arms, fists clenched tight—the same heart-breaking posture I’d found him in when he’d fled to La Push and decided his death was the best solution to all our problems. The last remnants of heated passion evaporated from my body at the sight. My heart still hammered heavily, but now it was struggling against the build-up of ice that had settled around it.

 

Five days ago, I might have been able to walk away from him. I’d almost done it, when I thought he’d gone to the beach to get away from me because he despised me so much. But that was five days ago, more than enough time for the imprinting bond to grow even stronger, even more impossible to ignore. Nothing anyone—not even Nahuel himself—could have done or said would have forced me away from him now.

 

Carefully, because my legs felt buttery and limp, I climbed off the bed and took a tentative step toward him. The room wasn’t large; it took just two more steps to reach his side. I knelt beside him, just as I’d done at La Push. This time, however, I wasn’t sure if I should try jolting him with the electrical charge that touching him would surely create.

 

Instead, I called his name, softly, the way one would speak to a frightened child. “Nahuel?” He didn’t respond. I tried again.

 

“Nahuel, look at me. What just happened here?”

 

He didn’t raise his head, but I knew he heard me; a massive tremor rippled through his clenched body. “Leave me, Leah. Please.”

 

Were we back to him trying to push me away? _Oh no, I don’t think so, vamp-boy. We’ve come too far to go back now._

“Nahuel, look at me right now,” I said, determinedly. Instead of touching his shoulder, this time I pried the fingers of one hand open and twined my own around them. Once again, that powerful charge sparked his response, and he lifted his head from his arms. My heart seized painfully at the haunted misery etched on his beautiful face. He pulled his hand from mine.

 

“Leave me,” he said again, a little more forcefully this time.

 

“I can’t leave,” I replied. When he continued to stare at me silently, I plunged on. “You’re sitting in front of the door.”

 

Confusion edged out the misery for a moment, then, as understanding crept behind it, Nahuel shifted slightly, sliding a few feet away from the door. “You can go now,” he said, looking away from me, his tone rife with resignation.

 

I didn’t hesitate. “I still can’t go.”

 

“Why not?” Now he was starting to get annoyed, and it slipped into his voice.

 

_Good. I can work with annoyed. That’s a hell of a lot better than defeated._

“You’re still in my way, Nahuel,” I replied, crawling on my hands and knees to close the distance he’d put between us. “You’re always in my way and you always will be, no matter where or how far you go. And if you try to get out of my way, I’m just going to find you and put you back there. You’re not going to get away from me, so you might as well stop trying to run and start talking instead.” I sat down beside him, and took his hand again. This time he allowed me to keep it.

 

He stared at our meshed fingers. “I have brought nothing but danger and chaos to your life. Why do you endure me?” he whispered.

 

How to answer that? How could I tell him that he’d totally devastated the apathetic status quo I’d been living with for the past six years? That he’d completely wiped out the complacent security I’d enjoyed for so long? And how could I make him understand that every minute of madness was totally worth it because it was a minute spent with him, a minute in which I felt _whole_ —something I’d never dreamed I would feel again?

 

I couldn’t say any of those things, not yet, not even after what we’d nearly done together in this room. So instead, I answered his question with my own.

 

“What happened, Nahuel? You can tell me. Nothing you can say will make me walk out that door, so you might as well just talk about it.”

 

He still couldn’t look at me. His free hand rose to scrub at his face, and his graceful fingers settled over his eyes. He was hiding from me, and I didn’t think he would answer my question. But after a moment, I heard his voice, low and rasping.

 

“It was what you said. It reminded me that no matter how much I wish otherwise, I am a monster, a monster that could easily kill you.”

 

It was my turn to be confused. “I don’t understand. What did I say?”

 

He dropped his hand and finally looked at me. Misery and unshed tears swam in his bottomless eyes. “You called me ‘baby,’ and you said I was killing you.”

 

Anger whipped through my brain. _Oh you have GOT to be kidding me. Of all the stupid-ass things to be upset about._

 

Then, just as quickly, the need to comfort pushed the annoyance aside. “It’s just an expression, Nahuel. You were frustrating the hell out of me because I wanted you to go faster, but you weren’t hurting me at all.”

 

“Leah, the very act of intercourse with me could hurt you,” he said, his tone overly patient, the kind of patience you’d use when trying to explain to a small child or the village idiot why playing with matches and gasoline wouldn’t be a good idea. “There is a reason why I have never been with a human woman before. I never wanted to be like my father. I never wanted to risk impregnating a human woman.”

 

_Baby … killing me …._

If I could have bent my leg far enough to kick my own ass, I would have booted myself to La Push and back. My mind was spinning in circles, trying to zero in on what I could possibly say or do to fix this for him, but he was still talking.

 

“Avoiding entanglements with human women was never a problem before,” he said, lowering his eyes again. “I never encountered one I could not stay away from, until I met you. I do not understand why it is so, but I cannot stay away from you.”  

 

Could a human heart soar and shatter at the same time? Mine felt like it was doing exactly that. I totally understood his confusion over a compulsion he couldn’t control or explain. It broke my heart that it caused him so much anguish, but it also thrilled me to know he _was_ feeling the pull of the imprinting.

 

He dropped his head onto his bent knees. “I nearly took you without any precaution,” he choked. “I could have … created a monster … murdered you with my passion.” Tremors shook his body and he clawed at his own hair again, as he had that night on the beach. “I am no better than my sire.”

 

I didn’t think. Just as I’d done that morning behind my father’s woodshed, I pushed his arms out of my way and climbed into his lap. Like this morning, there was nothing sexual about this embrace, despite our nudity.

 

“You are nothing like him, do you hear me? And you don’t need to stay away from me, Nahuel,” I said, cradling his face in my hands and gently forcing him to meet my eyes. “I understand if you’re not ready for this level of intimacy right now. But when you are ready, you need to know that you won’t hurt me … that way.”

 

It would be agony to finally speak the truth. Never saying it aloud in so many words had helped me avoid facing the truth for years, had allowed me to lie to myself that maybe what I suspected _wasn’t_ really the truth at all. But Nahuel needed those words right now. There was nothing I wouldn’t give him, no matter what it might cost me.

 

“I can’t get pregnant,” I said. The words hung in the air between us, then settled on my skin, the pain of their finality seeping through layers of flesh to brand their brutal truth on my bones. _Fuck me. The truth really does hurt, doesn’t it?_ “My body doesn’t do the things a woman’s body has to do for pregnancy to be possible. It’s the cost of being a shape-shifter, I guess.”

 

Surprise and relief rippled across his face. I thought I’d done a good job of keeping my tone and expression placid and neutral when I said those agonizing words, but he must have seen something of what I was trying to hide. The relief quickly fell away from his eyes, replaced by something that looked suspiciously like sympathy, and perversely, a hint of disappointment. He drew me against his chest, wrapping his strong arms around me.

 

“I am so sorry, ñi piuque,” he breathed against my cheek, one hand rubbing tender, comforting circles on my back, while the other stroked my still-damp hair. I realized it wasn’t pity he was offering me, but the empathy of one who understood what it meant to be frozen and futureless.

 

We sat like that for a while, neither of us eager to return to the reality waiting outside my bedroom door. It was fully night now, but the house remained silent. My mother was probably still at the hospital with Charlie, but I wondered where Seth could be this late. I found I couldn’t focus on much of anything beyond this peaceful bubble where Nahuel and I were the only two people in the world. I was utterly exhausted by the day’s emotional rollercoaster, so tired that I didn’t even realize I’d dozed off on his lap until I felt myself being lifted and carried toward the bed.

 

_Damn, he’s strong._ He lowered me to the bed, tugging the sheet out from under me and gently lofting it over my body. I couldn’t force my eyes open, but I clutched at his arm. “Stay with me.”

 

“Gladly,” he replied, slipping beneath the sheet. He eased me onto my side and spooned behind me. The comfort of his delicious heat eased away the last of the day’s soreness and tension from my muscles. Nothing ever felt warm to me except him. He was more soothing than a hot water bottle, more relaxing than a deep tissue massage.

 

His arm draped over my waist, pulling me close. He nuzzled through my hair, pressing a light kiss beneath my ear. Sleep was pulling me under fast now, but I thought I heard him whisper something in that strange, erotic language of his.

 

“Inchepoyeneimi ….”

 

I would have to remember to ask him what that meant, I thought. Then I slipped over the edge into oblivion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12 – Magic Dance

**Jacob POV**

 

When she was human and pissed off, Bella had always been cute as hell. She would get all hissy and puff up like a kitten that thought she could take on a Rottweiler. Honestly, when she was human and tried to rip me a new one, my biggest problem was trying to decide whether to laugh at her or kiss her on the nose.

 

Pissed-off _vampire_ Bella, well, that was another story. Vampire Bella _could_ kick my ass—man or wolf— six ways from Sunday, because she knew I wouldn’t fight back. Not only could I not hit a girl, I could never hit a girl who was also my best friend, and _my_ girl’s mother.

 

For two days, I’d been on Bella’s bad side, and it didn’t matter one bit that the whole situation wasn’t my fault. Leah was the reason Bells was madder than a wet cat, but my beta was way too smart to come within a country mile of any Cullen right now. So my vampire BFF was taking out her frustrations on the only wolf dumb enough to be around when she was like this—namely, me.

 

The sunny day wasn’t helping Bella’s mood, either. Sunshine meant sparkly Bella, and sparkly Bella couldn’t go to Forks Community Hospital to see Charlie. I got that she was worried about him, but seriously. His injuries were minor and it wasn’t like he was alone at the hospital. Sue hadn’t left his side since the attack.

 

Personally, I thought Bella ought to be glad for an excuse to get out of seeing Charlie today. It bought her a little more time to think about what she would tell him when he finally got home. Charlie was chomping at the bit for answers, but he knew he couldn’t say anything anywhere there was a risk of being overheard. I was pretty sure once he started asking his questions, and hearing the answers, he was going to be every bit as mad at Bella as he was at me.

 

Bella and her dad weren’t the only ones pissed at me right now, either. When I’d visited Charlie in the hospital, Sue had treated me like I’d dropped a rabid raccoon in the middle of a preschool class. Sam was wetting himself that the Cullens were going to view Leah’s mouthing off as a breach of the treaty. And the rest of the vamp contingent kept reminding me that the only reason they _weren’t_ pounding my ass for Leah breaking the treaty was because they expected me to give them little wolf-vampire-hybrid babies someday. But only after I’d married Renesemee in the eyes of God and man, of course.

 

About the only ones who weren’t giving me a rash of shit were the two people who could usually be counted on to do just that: Blondie, amazingly enough, and Leah herself. When Rose heard what Leah had done, she just smirked, muttered “It’s about damn time somebody yanked Charlie’s head out of his ass,” and marched off to entertain herself rebuilding the Vanquish engine for the bazillionth time.

 

Carlisle had said Charlie could go home tomorrow, so Edward, Bella and Sam decided we all needed to sit down together and get our stories straight. I’d asked Jasper and Carlisle to join us. Mostly because I wanted to talk about the new developments in the Joham situation, but also because I figured I could count on the two of them to help calm everyone down if things got out of hand.

 

Since Sam still refused to set foot in the Cullens’ house, and the tribal elders had never agreed to relax the treaty enough to allow the vamps onto the rez, we were all back at the practice field, sitting around in the tent.

 

Sam was being a real dick, and I was pretty sure Bella was seriously considering punching his lights out. He was standing just inside the tent door, arms crossed, looking like someone had just kicked his puppy. Bella was sitting on the other side of the tent, at a picnic table with Edward, as far from Sam and me as she could get and still be inside. The vibe beneath the canvas was _not_ good, but at least there were snacks, thanks to Esme.

 

“The cat is out of the bag for Jake, Seth and Leah,” Sam said. His whole attitude screamed belligerence. “And what you decide to tell Charlie about vampires is up to you. But I don’t think it’s necessary for him to know about my pack.”

 

“What difference does it make if he knows there are three wolves or thirteen or thirty?” I asked, trying very hard to keep my cool. The last thing we needed was for both Bella and I to lose it. “Charlie still feels grateful to you for finding Bella when she was lost in the woods. He’d never do anything to compromise you or your pack.”

 

_Sorry, man,_ I threw Edward’s way, knowing Bella had dropped her shield on me for the sake of this conversation. And that bringing up the time Edward had left Bella would probably still sting him, even after all these years. Edward treated me to an eye roll, but otherwise ignored my silent apology. _Damn. He gave Leah a pass right there at the crash scene. Why’s he still pissed at me?_

 

“If you don’t know, I’m certainly not going to tell you,” he murmured petulantly. _You are SUCH a girl,_ I shot back.

 

Sam gave Edward a curious look. He wasn’t used to the silent asides that everyone else had with Edward. After a moment, he turned his attention to Carlisle. He tended to do that—act like Carlisle was the last word—when he wasn’t getting what he wanted from me, and it chapped my ass every time he did it.

 

“I’m afraid I can’t budge on this, Dr. Cullen,” Sam said. “Because of his relationship with Renesmee, Jacob’s pack is permanently bonded to your family, but mine is not. When you leave Forks, we will all be safer if no outsiders know our secrets.”

 

I cringed inwardly at the word “outsider,” and glanced to Bella to see her reaction. Amazingly, Bella seemed to be considering Sam’s words.

 

Maybe he sensed Bella was wavering, or he interpreted Carlisle’s silence as agreement, because Sam moved in for the kill. “In exchange for you not telling Charlie about my pack, I can make you this promise: If the Volturi ever come looking for Charlie because of what he knows, we will hide him, and protect him to the last wolf.”

 

Bella was nodding her agreement before Sam even finished. “Deal,” she said. “If Charlie knowing about your pack will cause him trouble on the rez, and not knowing about them will make him a little bit safer, then I say this is one secret we should still keep from him.”

 

I groaned. “Bells, c’mon. Haven’t we had enough secrets to last us all a lifetime?”

 

She turned her angry glare on me. “Jake, you’re the one who started this entire keeping-secrets-from-Charlie thing in the first place. I appreciate why you did it, and it worked okay for six years, but now everything has changed. We’re going to be leaving Forks soon and I don’t want Charlie in any more danger than he has to be because of what he knows.”

 

I opened my mouth to protest further, but she cut me off, talking over me. “Jake, I’m done with this discussion. Once Charlie’s home from the hospital tomorrow, Edward, Renesmee and I are going to talk to him. We would like you to be there, too. We’ll play it by ear what we tell him about vampires, but we won’t say anything about Sam’s pack.”

 

Another difference between human Bella and vampire Bella—decisiveness. The stubbornness, however, that was all human Bella. She’d carried it over from her human life, and if anything she was even more pigheaded as a vampire than she’d been as a mortal. I knew there was no point in arguing any further.

 

Jasper, who’d listened quietly while the Sam versus Bella drama played out, spoke up, reminding me we had other important things to talk about.

 

“Well if that matter is settled, I think we need to discuss the newborn’s attack and this murder Charlie told Jacob about,” he drawled.

 

“Agreed,” I said, relieved to move on. I quickly recapped the developments of the past few days.

 

“Charlie said the reason he was on the rez was that there’d been a murder in Port Angeles,” I said, moving to take a seat next to Bella on the wooden picnic bench. She shifted slightly to look at me while listening, but made no move to get up. Guess she was ready to let her grudge go, at least a little bit.

 

“The murder sounds like it could have been the work of a vampire. Charlie said there was a witness who saw a suspect leaving the scene.”

 

“That’s not possible,” Jasper interrupted. “No vampire would leave a human witness alive, especially not if the killer was a newborn.”

 

“Agreed,” I said again. “It doesn’t make sense, but Charlie says there was a witness and their description of the suspect sounded like Nahuel.”

 

“Is there any chance that it actually could have been him?” Sam asked. “How much do you really know about him? Is it possible he slipped away and committed this crime?”

 

I ground my teeth, instantly pissed on behalf of my beta and her imprint, neither of whom was there to defend themselves. “No,” I said, adamantly. “He hasn’t had more than two minutes alone to himself since he got here, and the night of the murder, he was home with Seth, Sue and Leah. They can all vouch for him.”

 

I hesitated for just a moment, considering whether I should say more. _Hell with it. Put it out there._

“I trust Nahuel,” I told Sam. “He’s a decent guy.” 

 

Sam snorted and shook his head in disbelief. “A decent guy who roughed up Charlie and was on the verge of ripping out a human’s throat when a wolf stopped him?” he challenged.

 

Before I could answer, Carlisle came to Nahuel’s defense. “Given the recent trauma Nahuel has experienced, his response to the perceived threat of a gun was not unreasonable,” Carlisle pointed out. “From Jacob’s description of the incident, Nahuel didn’t fight Leah when she halted his attack on Charlie. I don’t believe Nahuel is really a threat to anyone, but even if he were, Leah, Jacob and Seth have demonstrated their ability to keep him controlled.”

 

“I hope you’re right, doc,” Sam said. “Because Jacob and I both had to do some fast talking to convince the elders to allow Nahuel to remain on the rez. I’d hate to see our trust misplaced.”

 

I could tell it was time to let this topic go. I wasn’t going to convince Sam of anything, but I hoped he would get the opportunity to meet Nahuel soon. Considering Nahuel’s opinion of how Sam had treated Leah, it would be a very interesting meeting.

 

“There’s more,” I continued, turning my attention back to Jasper. “The police in Forks received an anonymous tip that someone fitting the suspect’s description was seen on the rez. That’s why Charlie was there, and when he walked into Sue’s house and saw Nahuel … well, he kind of over-reacted a bit, which is really not like Charlie at all.”

 

Jasper paced slowly across the tent, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “So let’s recap our questions,” he said. “First, who committed this murder? Was it a vampire? If it was a vampire, how could there be a witness? Why did that witness give a description that fit Nahuel, and who tipped the cops that Nahuel was on the rez? Have I got it all?”

 

“No,” Edward spoke up. “You’re forgetting whether or not that murder ties into the Joham situation at all, and if so, how. Also, was the newborn that attacked Charlie sent by Joham? It seems logical to infer that it was, but what was the purpose behind attacking Charlie?”

 

Jasper considered for a moment. “We have to assume Huilen would have told Joham about Renesmee’s human grandfather,” he said, thoughtfully. “If I were Joham, I’d try grabbing said human to flush out my quarry.”

 

Bella drew an outraged breath beside me. I could feel her whole body shaking with fury. Edward slipped an arm around her and she instantly calmed a bit.

 

Jasper continued. “It doesn’t say much for Joham’s skill as a tactician that he would send a newborn vampire to do such a delicate task. Charlie’s very lucky that Leah was able to intercept the newborn before it could do anything worse than bang up his car.” He gave Bella a pointed look.

 

She sighed. “Point taken.” She turned to me. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a shrew to you for the past couple of days, Jake,” she said. “I know none of this is really your fault. My only excuse is that I’ve been so worried about Charlie for so long, and everything is coming to a head right now.”

 

I gave her a quick one-armed hug. “S’okay, Bells. We all just want what’s best for Charlie right now, and to protect Ness from this whack job.”

 

I turned back to Jasper. “Has Alice been able to see anything more?”

 

He shook his head. “She’s trying, but there are just too many blank spots. The only thing she can tell at this point is that there are no blank spots in her vision for the next few weeks.”

 

Three weeks of reprieve. I was certain things were going to turn really bad eventually, but I took some comfort in thinking that wouldn’t happen any time soon.

 

SSW/SSW/SSW

 

I wasn’t wrong, but then again, I wasn’t completely right either. When Charlie got home from the hospital the next day, things did get worse, just not spectacularly worse, and not in the way I thought they would.

 

Lying in a hospital bed, banged up from his encounter with a newborn vampire, Charlie had apparently had time to distill his shock and disbelief into righteous anger. The only good thing was he seemed to be just as pissed at Edward as he was with me. I was in the dog house for starting the big, shitty snowball of deception rolling six years ago, and Edward was at fault for ever existing, let alone having the gall to insert himself into Bella’s life.

 

And when the word “vampire” finally made it into the conversation, well, let’s just say I was really grateful that Edward had a couple of medical degrees. I was pretty sure Charlie was going to have a heart attack. Or a stroke. Possibly both.

 

Once he started breathing again, the shouting really began. It took Ness to finally put everything in perspective for him.

 

“Grandpa, this is reality. It’s been my reality all my life, and now it’s yours too. If you love Mom and me, and want us to be part of your life, then you’re going to have to accept this reality and learn to deal with it. Mom and Dad are vampires, I’m half-vampire, half human, Jake’s a werewolf and we all love you very much.”

 

That drained the purple out of Charlie’s complexion and the pissed off out of his attitude. He just dropped into his chair, totally deflated, and reached for Sue’s hand. It didn’t take him that long to collect himself, and then he began grilling us on Nahuel, the murder and what else was going on in Forks that its chief of police didn’t know about.

 

We told him as much as we could, begged him to stay out of it, and finally got him to agree to keep his eyes open, his mouth shut, and call us immediately if he saw anything out of the ordinary. And he gave us one more piece of the puzzle: the name of the “witness” who’d claimed to see the murder suspect.

 

It was “Anjali Johanson,” a woman who claimed to be a tourist and who had disappeared from Port Angeles immediately after giving police her statement. How freaking obvious was _that_?

 

“You know, Charlie’s actually dealing pretty damn well,” I told Ness after we left her grandfather’s house. We were on our way to my dad’s place so I could pick up some clean clothes. Since I’d been staying with the Cullens since Nahuel reappeared, I was running low on clean clothes. I loved Esme, but I couldn’t let her do my laundry. Dirty clothes just end up smelling worse when you let a vampire wash them for you.

 

“Makes me think maybe he would have been okay if we’d told him all this long ago,” I reflected, parking the truck close to the wheelchair ramp that lead to the front door. Since it was pouring like hell (of course), I was trying to keep our run to the door as short as possible. I popped the door handle, but Ness laid her tiny hand on my arm before I could get out.

 

“Jake, I know you’re feeling guilty about all this, but don’t,” she said, firmly, pinning me with those big, brown eyes I loved. “This all started a long time ago and you did what you had to do at the time to ensure we could all stay together. No one blames you. I’d do anything to be able to stay with you, too.”

 

It was amazing how she always knew exactly what to say to make me feel better. I leaned over and gave her a quick kiss of thanks on the lips before jumping out of the truck and sprinting through the downpour. Even though I’d practically parked on the front porch, we were both soaked by the time I got the door open.

 

The house felt really tiny and sad without dad there. But his health had been failing for a while and Rachel and I had been after him to move in with her and Paul. He finally gave in earlier this year when he fell trying to get out of bed and into his wheelchair. He’d thought he would hate to give up his independence, but it turned out he loved spending time with Rachel’s kids. Most of the time, I was alone in the house. We hadn’t yet decided what we’d do with the place once I left Forks with the Cullens.

 

I shucked my wet, muddy shoes by the front door and headed for the bathroom at the back of the house. “Stay there, I’ll bring you some towels,” I called to Ness over my shoulder. I grabbed a couple of towels from the bath and returned to the living room.

 

“Do you want to borrow a dry shirt?” I asked, stepping into the room. I took one look at Renesmee and the blood drained from my head, pouring south to pool around my _other_ head, the one that usually took control in moments like this.

 

Ness stood by my front door, stripped down to her bra and panties, both of which were totally soaked and see-through. The sight threw me straight into a state of precariously balanced anger and horniness. She’d been doing her best lately to ensure I was very familiar with the feeling and I didn’t like it one bit.

 

“ _What_ are you doing?” I growled.

 

“Getting out of my wet clothes,” she replied, her eyes wide with fake innocence. “Why? What does it look like I’m doing?” When I didn’t immediately reply, she took a step in my direction. That snapped me out of my lust-induced stupor. I knew if she came any closer, I was going to be on her like a duck on a June bug.

 

“Stay right there,” I ordered, tossing a towel to her. She easily snatched it out of the air. Instead of wrapping it around herself, she used the towel to begin briskly rubbing her damp hair. Her tits bounced with every stroke of the towel.

 

I groaned low in my chest. I knew I should look away. Throw our wet clothes in the dryer. Go pack a bag with some clean clothes. Go into the kitchen and make us a few sandwiches. I should do anything other than stand there and watch her move the towel from her hair down over her body.

 

_Look away from my breath-takingly beautiful, mostly naked fiancée. Yeah, right. That’s not gonna happen._

She was working on her legs now, bending gracefully at the waist and moving the towel in long, sensuous strokes down her calves. My jeans felt like I’d strapped a straightjacket around my dick and my mouth was as dry as a wad of cotton. I licked my lips and without really thinking about it, reached down to adjust myself.

 

It took a few seconds for me to hear her talking past the blood roaring in my ears.

 

“You know Jake, since we have some time alone here, there’s something I wanted to discuss with you,” Ness said. She’d finished drying off and draped the damp towel over the radiator near the front door. Drying off hadn’t done a damn thing to make her underwear less revealing.

 

_Talk? She wants to talk?_

“What was that?” I asked, as she slowly approached me.

 

“Well, you know how when Nahuel first showed up we agreed that we might need to post-pone the wedding until this situation was resolved?” She was standing right in front of me and I could swear the heat coming off her body was steaming the dampness right out of my clothes. Or maybe that was me, since she had me so incredibly hot right now.

 

I was fixated on the drop or two of water that was pooling in the dip of her collarbone, water she’d somehow managed to miss despite all that energetic rubbing. My brain wanted me to suggest I could take care of that for her—with my tongue. Fortunately, what came out of my mouth was:

 

“Uuuhhh … yeah?”

 

She placed both hands on my chest and stepped closer, pressing herself against me. I thought I could hear the moisture sizzling off our skin. When she leaned into me, smashing my erection between us, I expected my brain to liquefy and trickle out my ears.

 

“I don’t want to wait to get married, Jake,” she said, sliding her palms up my chest. When she reached my shoulders, she pulled herself up to press a kiss on the corner of my mouth. I shivered and my hands found their way to her waist without any direction from me.

 

“We may not have a choice, sweetheart.” I was really trying to hold on to the last scraps of my sanity. “What if Joham picks our wedding day to show up in Forks? Do you really want to be left standing at the altar if I have to go off and fight?”

 

“I thought of that, and I have a solution,” she said, raising one leg impossibly high and hitching it around my waist. When she used that leverage to start climbing my body, I instinctively slipped my hands under her rear to support her. Again, acting entirely independently of my direction, my hands began to massage her ass cheeks.

 

_How is she not losing her mind right now? I sure as hell am._

“What’s that?” I asked, lowering my head so I could reach her neck with my mouth. Now my lips and tongue were acting on their own too, licking and sucking down her long, graceful neck. _Shit! Is any part of me still under my control?_

“Let’s elope.”

 

In my wild pre-Renesmee youth—and granted, there wasn’t much of it in terms of length of time—I’d once gotten totally trashed at a party Paul threw. My pack brothers had thought it would be funny as hell to dump my naked, drunk ass into the ice tub along with the bottles of cheap beer and wine cooler. That had been the most dick-shriveling moment of my life. Until now.

 

At Nessie’s words, my erection deflated faster than a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float after an unfortunate encounter with a light pole. I pushed her legs from around my waist and peeled her arms off my neck. I set her firmly on the floor and stepped away from her. Too pissed to speak, I turned away and snagged a clean towel from the floor where I’d dropped it when I first walked in on Renesmee in her Victoria’s Secrets.

 

Behind me, Ness blew out a frustrated sigh. “Fuck,” she moped. “C’mon Jake. Why the hell not?”

 

“You know why not,” I growled, still refusing to look at her. I peeled off my wet T-shirt and jeans (two could play at this game) and, wearing nothing but my boxer briefs, collected Renesmee’s wet clothes from the floor. I stalked into the kitchen, where our washer and dryer were hidden behind a partition at the far end of the room, and tossed the clothes into the dryer. I braced my hands on the machine and leaned forward, dragging in deep breaths to calm myself. I knew I’d just been played and it wasn’t a good feeling at all.

 

Nessie’s quiet tread signaled she’d come into the kitchen behind me. I didn’t turn around, didn’t acknowledge her until she slipped her arms around my waist from behind. Her soft, warm cheek pressed against my back and I felt my anger ease slightly.

 

“I’m sorry to upset you,” she said softly, brushing her lips against my skin. “I just feel like we’re allowing everything else, including my father and Nahuel’s, to make this decision for us.”

 

I turned in her arms to face her and looped my arms behind her back. I didn’t like arguing with her. Being at odds with Renesmee made me feel off-centered, adrift. “I wish I could make you understand why this is important,” I sighed.

 

She gazed at me solemnly. “I’m listening. Please try to explain. I really want to understand.”

 

I rested my forehead against hers and closed my eyes, searching for the words. “Most people get one short lifetime to either get things right or completely fuck things up,” I said. “Sink or swim, it’s over and done with in seventy or eighty years.”

 

I lifted my head and gazed into her eyes, willing her to understand. “It’s different for us. We have forever. On the one hand, it’s an incredible gift to know you have eternity with the ones you love. On the other, it’s a helluva responsibility knowing that if you hurt the ones you love, they could stay hurt forever.”

 

She was quiet as she processed my words. One of the things I loved most about her was that she listened with an open mind the few times when we actually disagreed. I couldn’t claim the same fairness. Finally she sighed and nodded.

 

“Alright, I can’t say I agree, but I think I understand your perspective,” she said. “You do realize, though, that if Grandpa Charlie had ever intruded into Mom and Dad’s sex life as much as my father has into ours, Mom would have told him where to go?”

 

I chuckled, relieved that she seemed willing to let the idea of eloping fade into the background. “Oh, yeah, I know.” She giggled with me, then grew serious again.

 

“Can we agree to a compromise? I won’t bring up the idea of eloping again if you agree to move forward with the original wedding date come hell or high water.”

 

I grinned. “I can agree to that. If Joham does decide to show up on our wedding day, I’ll just make sure the fucker is ready to play flower girl before I pound his ass into oblivion.”

 

She laughed again and pressed her nearly-naked body against mine. That quick, my Macy’s float was ready for the parade all over again.

 

“Now I’d like to propose another compromise,” she said, breathily, reaching up to slip her fingers into my hair and pull my mouth toward hers.

 

“Yeah? What’s that?”

 

“Well, since we’re still waiting for you to make an honest woman of me, I propose we explore … alternative … ways of enjoying ourselves.”

 

I grinned against her lips.

 

“Deal.”

 


	13. Chapter 13 – A Perfect Day

**Leah POV**

A dress. A fucking dress. With a sweetheart neckline, swirly knee-length skirt, adorable little cap sleeves, and pink and green cabbage roses woven into the pattern. I was wearing a freakin’ dress with a pair of strappy, come-fuck-me-sandals.

 

And I was on my way to a barbecue. With vampires.

 

_How could I let this happen?_

 

I bounced along in the cab of Jake’s truck, sandwiched between Nahuel on my right and Jake, driving, on my left. My ass went airborne for two seconds before slamming back down on the rump-sprung seat. Off-roading to the barbecue with my Alpha and my imprint was not the best idea I’d ever heard of. Then again, going to Esme Cullen’s annual end-of-summer shindig hadn’t been my idea at all. I’d ducked the event from the first year she’d held the mixer for the wolf packs, their family members, and all available vegetarian vamps.

 

The reason I’d agreed to go this year was sitting beside me, his right elbow propped on the frame of the open truck window, chin in hand, head halfway out the window. A happy, puppyish grin occupied his beautiful face. His left hand held my right, lightly, on top of his left thigh. Electricity crawled along my skin whenever the truck’s movement over the rutted trail jostled me into him.

 

Jake kept pretending he wasn’t sneaking peeks at us out of the corner of his eye. I mentally dared him to say anything, because the whole hand-holding thing was freaking me the hell out, too. Nahuel had taken my hand in his as soon as we left the driveway of my mom’s house. He’d been doing that kind of thing a lot over the past couple of weeks.

 

Ever since our frustratingly failed attempt at love-making the day he’d attacked Charlie, Nahuel had been acting like … well, like a _boyfriend_.

 

Part of me wanted to tell him to knock it off because I was a sure thing. It’s not like he had to woo me to get into my panties. I’d have jumped him immediately if he’d given me even one signal that he was ready for it. But another part of me, the very large part that was completely under the control of the imprinting bond, told me to keep my mouth shut. Let him hold my hand. Wrap an arm around my shoulders while we watched a movie on the couch. Steal sweet, modest, hands-free kisses with his arms elbow-deep in a sink full of dirty dishes.

 

Nahuel had shifted gears again, and this time it seemed like he was focused on exploring a new human experience—romance. He’d told me his previous sexual encounters had only been with vampires. Vampires mated. Humans dated. I suspected Nahuel was using this change in our relationship as one more tool to bind himself more firmly to the human half of his nature. It was one more way to be as unlike his father as possible; after all, Joham had screwed and impregnated plenty of human women, but he hadn’t stuck around with a single one of them. If feeling more human would make Nahuel want to stay alive—and stay with me—I was more than happy to let him play the gentleman boyfriend.

 

Part of me relished his attentiveness. Knowing he lusted after my body was empowering, but feeling like he wanted me for companionship, and not just for sex, was both intoxicating and frightening. Intoxicating to feel special in such a normal way. Frightening because it made me hope that we could possibly have a future together. But was it a false hope?  

 

I had to accept the very real possibility that he could disappear from my life at any moment.  When that happened, when he ripped that invisible cable out by the anchors … well, this new approach of his pretty much guaranteed my soul would bleed out entirely through the hole he’d leave behind.

 

Jake cleared his throat and down-shifted the truck, bringing me back to the moment.  Oh yeah, that moment. The one where I was about to prance into a field full of hulking, testosterone-addled werewolves and bona fide vampires. Wearing a dress.

 

All because Nahuel had wanted to go. With me. And my mother made me wear a dress.

 

The truck slowed as we approached the clearing. I could see through the trees that Esme and Alice had added a couple more tents to the one that usually occupied the field. The tents and picnic area were set up at the near end of the field, while the back half had been reserved for games. I vaguely recalled Jake and Seth blathering something about touch football and kicking some vampire ass. 

 

Jake parked the truck beside an old beat-up minivan, reminding me of yet another reason why I usually avoided this get-together. Sam and Emily were here, with their brood. While the power of the imprinting had pushed out the lingering remnants of bitterness I had usually felt about Sam, I still wasn’t eager to see him or his family.

 

Nahuel hopped out of the truck and turned to help me down. I certainly didn’t need the hand he held out to steady me, but I took it anyway. My skirt rode up my thighs as I slid to the ground, and I caught an appreciative glint in his eyes. _Really?_ It wasn’t like he didn’t see my legs in shorts practically every day, or that he hadn’t seen all there was to see a few weeks ago. Maybe Mom had been right to insist on the dress.

 

Jake came around the truck and slammed the passenger door shut behind me. Nahuel was still holding my hand and had turned to look expectantly toward the tent, where the party was well under way. The aroma of barbecue, burgers and corn on the cob wafted through the air. Although I’d never admit it, I was actually looking forward to the food; Seth and Jake both raved about the cooking skills of vampires.

 

I caught Jake eyeing our linked hands. I shrugged one shoulder in his direction. _Guess we’re going public._ He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but before he could speak, Seth bounded up to us.

 

“Hey guys! It’s so cool you came. Esme’s outdone herself with this year’s spread, and Alice and Em have some awesome games planned.”

 

Jake grinned, grabbed Seth in a friendly headlock and rubbed his knuckles on my brother’s crown. “You mean there’s actually still some food left after you got to the tables?” He released Seth’s head and gave his shoulder an affectionate shake.

 

“Hardy-har-har,” Seth snorted. “Paul’s not here yet. That’s the only reason there’s any grub left for anyone else. You guys better get into the food tent and get some.”

 

That was all Nahuel needed to hear. Since the first night in our house when my mother had served him the first steak he’d ever had in a century and a half, Nahuel had been obsessed with trying new human food. Some of it he just hated, like most vegetables, and, surprisingly, anything with whipped cream. He loved every kind of meat he’d tried, however, and treated ice cream like a religious experience. He gently tugged on my hand, leading me toward the collection of tents.

 

Between Jake’s pack, Sam’s, all their family members, the handful of tribe members and elders who had the testicular fortitude to mingle with vampires, and the Cullens themselves, there were probably close to seventy-five people milling around. Jake would have said I was being paranoid, but I was pretty sure every single one of them was staring at my hand in Nahuel’s. I didn’t care why they were staring—whether they were curious or hostile—I didn’t like being the center of so much attention.

 

When we fell in line at the buffet, he finally let go of my hand to pick up a tray with plates on it. As we moved down the line, he looked like he was loading a little bit of every dish onto our two plates. Occasionally he would speak to one of the pack members he knew, and once Jasper passed by carrying an enormous beer keg under each arm. He tossed a smile and friendly nod in our direction, and I marveled at how easily my imprint seemed to fit in.

 

After the plates were overflowing with food, we moved toward the beverage table.  A thought occurred to me. “Have you ever had beer?” I asked Nahuel curiously. He grinned widely and my heart trip-hammered into double time. “No, but I would very much like to try some today.”

 

“How does alcohol affect you?” I asked, snagging a large plastic cup in each hand. Froth splashed onto my right hand, and I absently lifted the cup toward my face to lick the beer away. When Nahuel didn’t immediately answer my question, I looked up to find him watching my movement. His teak eyes made it clear he was imagining my tongue licking something other than my own hand. He’d apparently found my innocent action very stimulating, and he was making no effort at all to conceal that fact from me.

 

That fast, I was wet and cursing the damn dress. Hoping he couldn’t smell my arousal, I wished for a layer of denim between my damp crotch and the rest of the world. “I need to sit down,” I muttered, and turned to lead him toward the picnic area. I found a shaded table near the tree line and set our beers down on opposite sides of the table before dropping onto one of the benches with my back to the tents. Instead of taking a seat across from me, Nahuel placed both plates on the same side and sat down next to me. He casually reached across the table and retrieved his beer.

 

Holding the cup to his nose, he took a long, thoughtful sniff, wrinkled his nose slightly, and then took a tentative mouthful. He swallowed, grimaced and immediately sat the cup down. I’d been mid-sip when he pulled that face, and I snorted with laughter, beer dribbling over my lips and chin. “Not a fan, eh?” I teased.

 

His smile was apologetic. “No. The taste is not to my liking.” Those damned hypnotic eyes fell to my lips. “Perhaps it might taste better if savored in a different way.” He leaned toward me and I realized what he intended a split second before he kissed me. His lips caressed mine, leisurely, languidly, before lowering slightly to lap the beer from my chin.

 

“Leah?”

 

My name, squeaked in a voice pitched high with astonishment, was like a lapful of ice water. Of all the people I would least want to have catch me in a lip lock with a half-vampire, my cousin, the woman who’d replaced me in Sam’s life, was very near the top of the list.

 

“Hi, Emily.” I caught Nahuel’s quiet intake of breath when I said Emily’s name, but he remained silent.

 

She stood frozen in place, three plates of food balanced precariously on her arms. On either side of her stood a little Uley spawn, their eyes round and mystified. Their small heads swiveled back and forth, their eyes moving from their mother to me and back again. Obviously, Emily had seen the open end of our table and thought to sit down. But that was before she realized who she’d be sitting next to.

 

I knew the polite thing to do would be to offer them a seat, but I really had no interest in sharing a table—or my imprint—with them. Maybe she’d be satisfied with some pleasantries, take my lack of an invitation as the not-so-subtle hint it was, and move on to another table, preferably on the other side of the field.

 

“You look good,” I offered. Emily had been openly staring at Nahuel, and I felt a stab of irritation. When I spoke, she tore her eyes away and gave me a watery smile.

 

“Thanks. You, too,” she said. Then she looked pointedly at Nahuel again, waiting for an introduction.

 

I sighed. “Emily, this is Nahuel.” I was pretty sure she was waiting for me to expand on who he was, even though Sam had certainly told her all about the half-vampire that was rooming with the Clearwaters. After witnessing our kiss, maybe she thought I’d add some kind of social credentials to his name. But I was so _not_ explaining to Emily who Nahuel was to me. Instead, I turned to my imprint. “Nahuel, this is my cousin Emily Uley, Sam Uley’s wife. You remember Sam, right? He’s the leader of the other LaPush wolf pack.”

 

Nahuel rose gracefully, respectfully, and treated Emily to one of those heart-stopping smiles of his. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Uley,” he said. “May I help you with those plates?”

 

Emily’s mouth, which had fallen open when Nahuel turned the power of his panty-melting smile on her, snapped shut. She gulped loudly. “Uh … thanks, Nahuel. Nice to meet you, too.” Emily was usually pretty composed, so it gave me a pop of smug satisfaction that my imprint’s beauty could leave her tongue-tied. She fell silent, staring at him again, until Nahuel prompted her gently.

 

“The plates? Shall I help you carry them?” he asked politely.

 

“That won’t be necessary.” The words were sharp, the deep voice brittle with thinly concealed dislike.

 

I clenched my eyes shut. _Ohhhhh. Fuck. ME. Can this get any worse? Please let me have hallucinated that voice. I’m going to open my eyes and I will NOT see Sam standing in front of me._

I cracked open one eye. _Yep. Lifetime of lousy luck, holding steady._ “Hi, Sam,” I muttered, rising slowly to my feet beside Nahuel.

My imprint stood slightly in front of me, facing Sam, who had blatantly, rudely pushed between Nahuel and Emily. Even though Sam held a large soft drink cup in each hand, he looked powerful, dangerous and hostile. Realization dawned, illuminated by the waves of animosity rippling off both men. They were having a territorial Alpha-male moment. I wondered which one of them would start pissing on my sandals first.

 

My greeting seemed to momentarily divert Sam. He looked at me and his gaze softened slightly. “Hello, Leah,” he said, something warm in his voice, something that had no business being there. Especially since his wife and kids were standing right behind him. “It’s good to see you again. It’s been too long.”

 

A low rumble vibrated from Nahuel’s chest, drawing Sam’s eyes back to him. _Is my vamp-boy actually … growling … at my werewolf ex? Shit! Where the hell is Jake when I need him?_

Even after all these years, I knew Sam well enough to recognize the anger quivering below the surface of his dark eyes. He understood Nahuel’s growl for the threat it was. He obviously didn’t like the challenge, but he was too much in control of himself to let it provoke him. I wasn’t as confident about Nahuel’s control.

 

“Sam,” Emily said, stepping in front of her husband to command his attention. “Nahuel was just offering to help me with these plates. The kids are hungry, and I really need to get off my feet. Let’s find a table and let Nahuel and Leah get back to their meal.”

 

Sam’s eyes flashed to Emily and, with no subtlety whatsoever, dropped to her abdomen. Puzzle pieces slammed together in my head like clunkers at a demolition derby. Jake had told me how defensive and unreasonable Sam had seemed when they’d all met to discuss what to do about Charlie. Now I knew why. Emily was pregnant again and Sam was in total Alpha mode, protecting his mate and young from every real or potential threat. Evidently, he’d decided Nahuel fit in that category right along with Joham and his army.

 

I held this nugget of realization to myself quietly for a moment, turning it over in my mind, prodding it from different angles, waiting for my examination to unleash the pain I expected. But it didn’t hurt.

 

Okay, it stung a little, like the twinge of envy you might feel if another girl scored a better price on a dress you’d just paid full retail for. But there was none of the debilitating, suffocating anger and jealousy I’d felt when I’d learned of Emily’s first two pregnancies. For the first time since he’d upended my world in the living room of the Cullen mansion, I was intensely, humbly grateful for Nahuel’s presence in my life. I was free, and the reason for my freedom was standing beside me, struggling to control himself while I indulged in my introspective moment.

 

Although I wasn’t sure what had triggered Nahuel’s aggression, I knew exactly how to stop it. I took his right hand in my left, stepped closer to him so that he would feel the heat of my body against his arm, and laid my right hand on his bicep. Instantly, his eyes found mine. He leaned slightly toward me and drew in one deep breath. Then another. His body relaxed, although not completely, and the clouds of violence that had been brewing behind his eyes slowly rolled back.

 

Still glaring at us over Emily’s head, Sam didn’t miss the change in Nahuel’s attitude or that it was my touch that brought it on. “Emily, why don’t you take Will and Mary to sit with Quil and Claire?” he suggested, his voice gentle and controlled. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

 

Emily glanced over her shoulder at me uncertainly. She must have decided things looked under control, though, because she smiled. “It was good to see you, Leah. And to meet you, Nahuel,” she said, before leading her kids away. Sam watched his family leave and didn’t turn back to us until they were far enough away to not overhear our conversation.

 

“Leah, can I talk to you in private?” he asked.

 

Nahuel’s body stiffened and his grip on my hand tightened. He didn’t like Sam’s request. Neither did I.

 

“I don’t think so,” I told him, shaking my head and giving Nahuel’s arm a gentle squeeze.  I almost laughed out loud at Sam’s surprise. He’d really thought I’d agree to leave this stunningly beautiful creature beside me and go off with him. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Nahuel’s slight smirk.

 

Sam was persistent. “I really need to talk with you. What I have to say would be better said without an audience.”

 

I sighed. “Sam, what is it? Just say whatever you want to say so that I can get back to enjoying my day.”

 

Sam’s control was slipping now, his irritation seeping out around the edges of his carefully composed mask.  “All right, since you refuse to have this conversation privately, I’ll just say it.” He glared at Nahuel for a moment before taking a step toward me. “You’re playing with fire, Leah. He’s dangerous and out of control. He’s using you just like he’s using the Cullens. You have no business being with _him_. ” He spat the last word like it nauseated him to refer to Nahuel in any way.

 

I was flabbergasted. Appalled at his arrogance. Embarrassed by his rudeness. And utterly  infuriated. But before I could open my mouth to tell him to go to hell, Nahuel shook off my hands and took a step toward Sam, putting them nose to chin. Like Jake and Seth, Sam towered over my imprint, but Nahuel didn’t seem the least intimidated by their size difference.

 

“What is it to you, cur, who she is with as long as it is not you?” he hissed, his voice so low and furious it was barely audible even to me. “Just because you were blind to her worth, do not presume I am as great a fool. Go back to your family before you humiliate yourself any more. Or insult her further.”

 

The delicate threads of Sam’s control completely unraveled. “Fuck you, leech,” he snarled. “You have no business being around any human, let alone Leah. You’re the one who should get the hell out of here.”

 

Suddenly Jake’s broad shoulder appeared between Sam and Nahuel, and he was firmly pushing Sam backward away from my enraged imprint. Seth appeared on Nahuel’s left side, his brawny paw pressing gently on Nahuel’s shoulder.

 

“Whoa guys! Let’s take it down a notch,” Jake commanded.

 

Sam gave ground, allowing Jake to back him up a few steps, but he wasn’t done with his verbal assault. “Jacob, why are you allowing this?” he demanded, gesturing furiously between Nahuel and me. “Why are you allowing this blood-sucker to toy with her?”

 

Trust Jake to be the level voice of calm and reason when everyone around him was ready to throw punches. He stepped back from Sam and propped his hands on his waist, considering his words for a few seconds before he spoke. 

 

“I’m not Leah’s father or her boyfriend, and neither are you,” he said carefully. “It’s not my place to tell her what to do with her personal life any more than it is yours.”

 

His words hung in the air for a few heartbeats before Sam seemed able to fully absorb them. You could see the realization settle that Jake was not going to back him up, and had, in fact, simply reinterpreted and echoed back what Nahuel had said moments before.

 

“I can see I’m wasting my time here, but mark my words, nothing good is going to come of this,” Sam warned, before spinning on his heel and marching away. The tension he had created lingered behind him. Adrenalin was still singing through my veins. Jake and Seth watched his retreat, their massive bodies still poised for action.

 

It was Nahuel who broke the strained silence. “Asshole,” he muttered in disgust.

 

Seth’s mouth dropped open in tandem with Jake’s eyebrows leaping into his hairline. All three of us erupted into laughter. That word coming from Nahuel’s usually cultured mouth was a riot.

 

“Where the hell did you learn a word like that?” I demanded, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

 

Nahuel shrugged sheepishly. “From you,” he explained. “Why are you laughing? Did I not use the word properly?”

 

That sent Jake and Seth into fresh hoots. “Yeah, you used it right,” Seth gasped, dropping down at our picnic table. Without any invitation, he picked up a fork and dug into the food forgotten on our plates. Just as well. While our laughter had eased my tension, I no longer had any interest in the food.

 

“So correct me if I’ve misread what just happened here …” Jake addressed me, crossing his arms over his chest and casually hitching his hip onto a corner of the picnic table, “… but did I just break up two guys fighting over you?”

 

Heat flooded my cheeks. I wasn’t usually a blusher, but the surrealism of what had just happened wasn’t lost on me. “Yeah, I think so.”

 

Boldly, Nahuel took my hand in his, and favored Jake with a stern look. “She is worth fighting over. I would have liked to teach him that lesson in a more physical manner, but I realize that could have caused unnecessary complications for everyone. Thank you, my friend, for intervening.”

 

Jake’s eyebrows were going to vanish if he got any more surprises today. “You’re welcome. But, just in case Sam decides to come back with reinforcements, why don’t you two take a nice, quiet walk somewhere that you can’t get into any trouble?”

 

“That is a very good idea,” Nahuel said, gently tugging on my arm to lead me into the trees. I knew he was more familiar with the landscape around the practice field than I was, since he’d spent so much more time here than me. I didn’t really care where he was taking me, as long as it was away from the scene of the humiliating and infuriating confrontation with Sam.

 

It didn’t take very many steps into the woods before I remembered that I was wearing those rotten sandals. Even though they were flats, they were definitely not hiking attire. Neither was the dress. If I kept going, I was going to risk a turned ankle and scratched legs, or worse.

 

“Nahuel, wait,” I said. “I can’t walk in these damned shoes.”

 

Without a word, he scooped me up in his arms like a groom lifts a bride and was sprinting through the trees. I wasn’t used to going so fast in human form, and I definitely wasn’t in the habit of letting anyone carry me. But I didn’t protest, because if I wanted to go anywhere in this get-up, I would need his help to get there. After a few minutes of running, we stopped in a flower-filled clearing beside a brook that was just a little bit bigger than a rivulet. He set me on my feet and I turned in a slow, amazed circle. I’d never seen a lovelier spot.

 

I completed my turn and faced Nahuel, only to find him watching me. He’d run quite a gamut of human emotion today, from playful to horny to outraged. In the past month, my tiny little acre of the cosmos had shifted its orbit to circle entirely around Nahuel, and I’d become pretty good at reading his emotions. But I was confused by what I thought I saw on his face now—concern, caution, worry.

 

“What is it?”

 

He approached me carefully, as if he thought I would bolt. When he was close enough to make my head swim with his heat and scent, he slowly raised both hands to cradle my face. His caress was as light as the touch of a soap bubble settling on a feather pillow.

 

“Are you alright?” he asked, a tone of something I couldn’t quite identify simmering in his deep, rich voice.

 

“Of course,” I replied, raising my own hands to lightly grasp his wrists with a reassuring squeeze. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

The unidentifiable emotion from his voice had migrated to his eyes. He drew me into his arms, settling my cheek against his shoulder. Whatever was in his eyes, he didn’t want me to study it too closely, I realized.

 

“I know what he did to you,” he said gently. “I am sorry you had to see him today.”

 

I stiffened in his arms. “I don’t want to talk about Sam.”

 

He was silent for a moment, his big, warm hand rubbing gentle circles on my lower back. Now that was nice. Maybe I could encourage him to move that hand a little bit lower.

 

“I understand that it is upsetting to speak of him, but I feel I must,” he continued after a few moments. When I raised my head and glared at him, he began to rush the words out, as if he was afraid I would walk away from him.

 

“I meant what I said to Sam and Jacob about your worth. It is important to me that you know that,” he said. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting him to say. I would have understood anger at Sam’s insults. Or even possessiveness. But I didn’t know what to do with this earnestness. Was this his way of … declaring himself?

 

“And I want you to know that I would never do to you what Sam did.” His hands crept to my shoulders and his eyes held mine purposefully, powerfully. “I will not leave you, Leah. I do not think I could anymore, even if I wanted to.”

 

_Holy fuck._

 

Suddenly, I didn’t care if he was ready or not. I had to have him. Here. Now. In the open, in this clearing where Jake or Seth could come looking for us. Where our bed would be the hard ground instead of my soft mattress. Even the ricochets of Sam’s hate-filled anger echoing behind us didn’t faze me. I didn’t care about any of it. I only cared that he had promised he would stay with me.

 

I threw my arms around his neck, hopped gracelessly to clamp my legs around his waist and ground my mouth onto his. He was startled into momentary stillness. A shudder surged through his lean body, his arms twined around me and he began to return my greed-filled kisses.

 

He hadn’t kissed me this passionately since that night in my room. I buried my fingers in his hair. The clearing spun around us, then tipped backward, and I felt my back meet the grass. The soft coolness of the ground beneath me was a sensual foil to his hard heat above me.

 

He sucked lightly on my lower lip, urging my mouth open. I didn’t need much encouragement. As soon as my lips parted, his tongue plunged into my mouth. His hands wormed their way under my skirt and up my thighs.

 

Apparently, even half-vampires need to breathe. He broke the kiss, coming up for air, gasping raggedly against my lips. His hands kept moving, skimming over my thighs, exploring the waistband of my underwear, cupping and gripping my ass cheeks. “I have wanted to do this all day,” he panted, hiking my skirt up to my waist. His fingers found the top of my panties again and began tugging them down.

 

_Oh yes! Finally!_

 

My body was humming with anticipation. He was finally going to fill me with his hard, hot flesh. I’d already accepted that his soul was a part of mine. I was ready for his body to be part of me, too.

 

I raised my hips to allow him to freely pull my underwear down my legs. As soon as the cotton cleared my toes, I was on my knees, pushing him to a seated position so that I could make quick work of the buttons down his shirt front. I hurriedly shoved the shirt off his shoulders while he tugged the stretchy neckline of my dress down, under my breasts. As if he had a degree in brassiere design, he unhooked the front clasp of my bra and pushed the halves aside, in too much of a hurry to get his mouth on my tits to bother removing the damn thing.

 

He feasted on my breasts, sucking and licking at the nipples, using both hands to massage, cup and fondle. “I will make you forget that whelp ever touched you,” he promised in a low growl against my sizzling skin.

 

A harsh, screeching laugh sliced through the haze of lust that surrounded us. Torn between surprise and desire, my brain tried to identify the sound. _What the hell is a hyena doing wandering around the Olympic Peninsula?_

My eyes popped open just as Nahuel whipped around to face the intruder that had entered the clearing behind us.

 

We were fucked, and not at all in the way we’d hoped to be. Standing at the edge of the clearing was a trio of vampires—two females and a male.

 

The male’s eyes were a gory, stomach-churning red, and he was licking his lips like he was looking at an all-you-can-eat buffet. From the twist of his mouth, I assumed he’d been the source of that chilling laugh. One of the females—the smaller, olive-skinned one with a slick of straight black hair pouring down her back—stepped forward and addressed my imprint in a lilting, exotically accented voice.

 

“Nahuel, you must come with us now,” she said, calmly, as if she were inviting him over for cocktails.  “If you come willingly, perhaps Father will allow you to keep your human pet.”

 

Like two heads of a single powerful monster, Nahuel and I moved together. As he sprang at the intruders, I phased, my shout of rage morphing into a howl that would summon every wolf in hearing range. On the chance that one of my pack brothers was already in wolf form, I also began screaming in my head.

 

_Helphelphelphelp …this is it! This is it!_


	14. Chapter 14 – What’s Really Happening?

**Leah POV**

 

Nahuel was not a fighter. Jasper had sure tried to turn him into one over this past month, and he was passable at hand-to-hand against a single opponent. But when it came to the bigger picture and making tactical decisions, well, let’s just say it’s a good thing he was pretty because he sure wasn’t smart.

 

Which is probably why Nahuel made the worst possible move in our current situation; he immediately jumped the one foe whose superior strength and speed pretty much guaranteed his attack would fail. It wasn’t an opening move I would have recommended.  If I’d had time to think about it and communicate with him, I would have advised him to go first for the smaller female, who was obviously in charge. She was smaller, probably slower and less strong, and killing her would be like cutting the head off a snake.

 

As soon as short stuff made her less than generous offer to spare my life, however, my imprint made his move. He launched himself straight at the creepy-eyed male who looked to be a newborn. Amazingly, he actually managed to connect, hitting the male squarely in the midsection. His blow had no effect at all, other than to put him within the hands of his opponent, who was a hell of a lot stronger and faster.

 

Moving so fast he blurred, the male flipped Nahuel around, slammed him to the ground and pinned him there with a foot on his throat. Nahuel snarled and thrashed beneath the newborn’s boot, clawing at his leg. The newborn completely ignored his struggles, instead turning his attention to me with an almost bored expression. The two females quickly assumed defensive postures, placing themselves between my trapped imprint and me.

 

“Leah, run!” Nahuel shouted, pulling frantically at the newborn’s ankle. “They will not harm me. Run!”

 

If I’d learned to read Nahuel’s emotions in the past month, he’d become equally adept at interpreting my body language when I was in wolf form. So he knew without my verbalization what my answer was to his command. There was no way in hell I would run and leave him. But I had no idea what I was going to do to save him.

 

Terror lanced through my body. I was never afraid for myself in a fight. But the thought of seeing Nahuel injured, or worse, was nearly paralyzing me with fear. I froze where I stood, gripped by totally unfamiliar indecision.

 

All of this happened before the echo of my warning howl had faded. In the next second, Jake and Seth’s thoughts blazed into my awareness.

 

_There in two minutes!_ Jake assured.Through my pack brothers’ thoughts, I knew they were on their way, following our scents. Jasper and Emmett were with them. Within seconds, Paul and Beau’s thoughts joined the mix. Help was definitely on the way, and when it arrived, the hostile vampires would be severely outgunned.

 

Too bad Nahuel and I were getting our asses handed to us right now.

 

I was pretty sure both females were Nahuel’s hybrid sisters. The leader referring to their “father” seemed to confirm that. I had no doubt that vampire bastard had sent this trio to grab Nahuel. All three of them seemed to know instinctively that I was a threat. Maybe they were beginning to realize just what had happened to the newborn Joham had sent to attack Charlie.

 

One of the females began moving slowly, cautiously to my left, while the little leader danced to the right. Their attempt to divide my attention might have been obvious, but it was pretty much guaranteed to work. My head knew I should be watching what these two _femme fatales_ were doing, but the psychic tether that bound me to Nahuel ensured that I couldn’t take my eyes away from him.

 

They were fast, they were focused, and they were a practiced team. As the two females jockeyed for position, the newborn upped the ante. He leaned his weight on the foot that held Nahuel to the ground, cutting off his air. My imprint’s eyes bulged and his thrashing grew weaker. I knew it was a ploy to get me to tip my hand, but that didn’t stop me from responding.

 

My field of vision constricted to a single narrow and terrifying point: Nahuel’s gasping face. I leapt at the newborn without another thought. The females hit me from both sides, and I felt the sharp spear of pain that could only be a rib or two cracking beneath the impact. I knew I had to keep moving, and I leapt straight into the air, managing to shake the leader off. The other one kept her grip despite my leap. I began writhing, rolling over her repeatedly, trying to use the ground to scrape her off me. No matter what I tried, she stuck, snapping her jaws above my shoulders and back, heading inexorably toward my throat.

 

I don’t know where Nahuel got the air to scream, but his hoarse shout halted the hybrid’s attack instantly. “I will go! Stop! I will go with you!”

 

That breather was all I needed to throw the hybrid off with a heave that I drew up from my soul. She rolled across the clearing, regaining her feet in a single fluid movement that again put her between Nahuel and me.

 

Now that Nahuel appeared willing to do what they wanted,  the newborn relaxed his weight off Nahuel’s throat. Not even bothering to draw a full breath, he continued shouting at his sister, his raspy voice intense, pleading, cajoling. I didn’t need to understand the language he spoke to know that he was bargaining with her for my life. I realized he couldn’t know that the fight would be over in less than a minute when Jake and the others arrived. His distraction would buy us just enough time.

 

The smaller female didn’t take her eyes off me, but inclined her head to indicate she was listening to him. Nahuel was still talking, his voice strained, his tone urgent. Then, he said something that fully captured his sister’s attention. Her eyes—an unusual hazel shade—went wide with astonishment and then whipped to Nahuel. He had her full attention now, which was why she didn’t witness the spectacle of my pack brothers arriving with Jasper and Emmett on their heels.

 

“We need one alive!”

 

Jasper’s shouted command drew everyone’s eyes to him, just as Seth’s huge, hairy body slammed into Nahuel’s tiny sister like a wrecking ball. Their entwined forms went careening across the clearing, splashing into the stream.

 

In the next instant, Paul and Beau were shredding the other female. Killing a hybrid vampire was not like terminating a full vamp. Ripping apart a full vampire was actually a pretty clean process that didn’t involve any messy fluids. Hybrids, however, had heartbeats and blood. Tearing one apart was a gruesome, unpleasant task. Within seconds, my pack brothers and a patch of ground around them were bathed in blood and gore.

 

The newborn lost it. Being a newborn, his control couldn’t have been great to begin with, but at the first spray of blood from the injured hybrid, he flung himself toward his erstwhile ally. Emmett caught the crazed newborn easily and gracefully the instant its foot left Nahuel’s throat. It was a testimony to the amazing self-control the Cullens cultivated that neither Emmett nor Jasper so much as blinked at the bloodbath taking place under their noses. Emmett easily held the newborn’s arms behind it while Jasper deftly twisted its head off.

 

It was over in seconds, before I could even think to move, before my melting mind absorbed that my imprint was safe, no thanks to me.

 

Completely ignoring the bloody, dismembered body of his half-sister, Nahuel scrambled on his hands and knees across the short expanse of grass separating us. He threw his arms around my neck, knocking me to the ground and sending shards of pain through my cracked ribs. His hands fisted in my fur, and he buried his face against my pelt. Relief washed through me, and I clenched my eyes shut, relishing the feeling of his muscled body, warm and alive and _safe_ , pressed against me.

 

In the next heartbeat, my relief evaporated as I realized I couldn’t hear Seth’s thoughts in my head. My eyes sprang open and swept the clearing, searching for my brother. What the hell was going on?

 

Paul and Beau, covered in blood and standing over the torn body of the hybrid, were gaping toward the stream behind me. Their tongues lolled out of their yawning maws, and blood-tinged drool dripped off Paul’s canines.  Jake stood at the edge of the stream, puzzlement written on every line of his enormous form. Jasper, still holding the newborn’s head tucked under his arm like a football, was looking in the same direction. So was Emmett.

 

The biggest Cullen let out a low whistle through his teeth. “Well what the hell is _that_ all about?”

 

I swiveled my head toward the stream, dreading what I would see. But instead of the horror I expected—Seth’s battered, bloodied body—what I saw was bewildering and bizarre.

 

My brother sat waist-deep in the water, naked, in human form. That was why his thoughts had dropped out of my awareness: he’d phased. Nahuel’s hybrid sister was sitting in Seth’s lap, twined around him like a baby possum clinging to its mother. Seth hunched his body over hers, his beefy arms wrapped around her tiny form. He almost looked like he was protecting her. His normally clear, open and friendly eyes were narrowed, distrustful and almost feral. When he spoke, I barely recognized his voice as my brother’s.

 

“Stay back, all of you,” he growled, baring his teeth.

 

Instantly, Jake phased to human form. He took a cautious step toward Seth, his toes edging the low bank of the stream. “Seth, take it easy, man. What’s going on?”

 

“I mean it!” Seth shouted, peeling the female off him and pushing her miniscule form behind him. She was so small she practically disappeared behind his broad back. During the whole process, she didn’t allow her skin to leave contact with his for even a second. She shifted fluidly behind Seth, but kept her arms and legs woven around him. Tendrils of her long, wet hair stayed wrapped around his throat and chest. Seth growled again. “Stay the fuck away!”

 

Jake’s spine stiffened at the frantic threat in Seth’s voice. I’d heard him do it just a handful of times in the past six years, but I still immediately recognized the Alpha authority Jake infused into his next command.

 

“Seth, explain yourself. _Now_.”

 

Seth flinched and gasped like he’d just been hit in the face with a sock full of wet sand. He adored and idolized Jake, and that made the lash of the Alpha command all the more potent for him. He squeezed his eyes shut, the trembling of his body stirring splashes in the stream around him.

 

I’d gotten used to thinking of my kid brother as a huge, nearly invincible predator.  But in that moment I could only see the little boy he’d once been, crawling into my bed when a bad dream woke him, and the almost-man who’d sought the same comfort from me the night our father died. Seth made a visible effort to control himself. When he looked at Jake again, his eyes were clear and aware.

 

“I know you think she’s the enemy, but I can’t let you hurt her,” he said. “She’s mine, Jake.”

 

_Christ on a crutch._

 

I knew what he meant as soon as the words were out of his mouth. From the stupefied expression on Jake’s face, I was guessing he got it, too. But Emmett, Jasper, Paul and Beau didn’t know that there were already _two_ wolf-hybrid pairs in our pack. They needed Seth’s elaboration.

 

 

“She’s my imprint.”

 

Informing us that he’d just been elected supreme mighty ruler of the seventh inner circle of hell might have been more shocking, but only slightly. Paul and Beau both yelped in surprise, and Jake was so stunned he sat his naked ass down in the mud beside the stream. In a rare slip of control, Jasper wafted a wave of his own astonishment through the group, making the moment seem even more surreal than it already was.

 

Nahuel’s shaking voice didn’t make the atmosphere feel any lighter. “Jake, I also must ask you for her safety,” he said. “I owe her my life. Without her aid, I would never have been able to reach Forks.”

 

Jacob’s dark eyes, uncharacteristically round and bewildered, found Nahuel. “This is the sister who helped you escape?” Nahuel nodded once.

 

Jake climbed to his feet. “Seth, are you sure? Can you phase with me so I can check?”

 

Seth shook his head. “I don’t want to frighten her. If I phase I won’t be able to communicate with her,” he said. “Trust me, Jake. I’m sure. I’ve seen enough through the pack bond to know what I’m feeling.” His eyes flashed to me before sliding away guiltily. My heart rate hadn’t really slowed yet, and Seth’s stealthy glance pumped it up again.

 

Was it possible my brother had guessed my secret, as my mother had predicted he would?

 

On the heels of that worry, I felt Nahuel tense beside me. He hadn’t released his hold on me this whole time, and didn’t miss Seth’s look. Was the truth finally crystalizing for him? Was seeing it happen to Seth and his sister making him realize he’d lived through the same thing himself just a month ago?

 

I didn’t have time to wonder, because Nahuel’s sister chose that moment to speak in her musical voice. She was still plastered to Seth’s back, her body visibly shaking. “Seth?” He started, almost as if he hadn’t realized she could speak. He craned his neck to look at her over his shoulder.

 

“Yes?” His voice was tentative and unsure.

 

“Your name is Seth?” He nodded. “I’m Anjali.” Her eyes moved warily over the rest of our group, lingering a bit longer than I liked on Nahuel. Then, as if she’d made a decision she didn’t entirely trust, she crept back around Seth’s body, still touching him, so that she was kneeling in the water before him. She slid her trembling hands up his neck until her tiny palms came to rest on either side of his jaw.

 

“Do you know what’s happened to us?” It didn’t sound like she was asking him for an explanation, as Jake had, but rather confirmation that he also understood something she already knew. When Seth nodded, her lush mouth curved into a slight smile.

 

“You are my mate,” she said, her voice now sure and strong. “I never dreamed I would find one. It wasn’t what Father had planned for me. But nothing matters more to me now than you. I will do and be whatever you require.” As if they were completely alone, she sealed her lips to his, and Seth returned her passionate kiss without hesitation. His big arms pulled her tiny body flush against his chest and he kissed her like sucking face with a half-vampire was something he did every day of his life. Actually, knowing Seth, he probably _would_ do it every day from now on.

 

That was it. Like everything else in his life, Seth approached this catastrophic shift with an open heart. That easily, he accepted this realignment of his reality and embraced his future with a half-breed imprint he knew next to nothing about. And that easily, _she_ accepted _him_ —if the fact that she now appeared to be trying to suck his tonsils out through his teeth was any clue to her state of mind at the moment.

 

_Of course she loves him already. Everyone loves Seth._

 

I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Why couldn’t things be this easy, this effortless, this certain, for Nahuel and me? Maybe the source of our difficulties wasn’t that he was half-vampire, but that I was a mistrustful, maladjusted bitch.

 

While my brother and his imprint acted like they were alone in the back of my mother’s Buick, the rest of us stood and sat around like morons. None of us were used to feeling this unsure of ourselves.

 

Finally, Emmett broke the stagnant silence. “Jeez, get a room,” he grumbled, as he pulled his cell from his pocket and speed-dialed.

 

“Carlisle, we need you and Edward. We have injuries and an alleged imprinting.” He snapped the phone shut, shrugging at Jake’s questioning expression. “What? I could hear Leah’s ribs crack from a mile away. And Edward will be able to read what’s really going on with these two.”

 

Nahuel seemed to skip over every other part of Emmett’s statement except for one small detail. He dragged my head around to face him, so that he could glare disapprovingly into my eyes. “You are injured? Why did you not phase and tell me?” Did he really think I was willing to be naked in front of this motley crew? I rolled my eyes and shook off his hands before climbing to my feet. And then sat back down just as quickly when my ribs screamed in protest.

 

Still sitting in the stream, Seth and the female had finally come up for air.  Her arms were clamped around his neck; her head nestled on his shoulder. _They look so fucking peaceful._

 

Jasper, Paul and Beau began to drag vampire and hybrid pieces into a pile. Jasper dropped the newborn’s head onto the stack of body parts. He approached Jake, who still hadn’t said anything. Our Alpha’s face clearly said he was trying to process the fact that there were now three members of his pack with hybrid imprints.

 

“Might be better for us all if Seth’s right,” Jasper murmured, nodding toward the girl. “If he is, stands to reason she’d be more willing to help us. She could give us the break we need to get a step ahead of Joham.”

 

I didn’t know what to think, much less what to hope for. But as Nahuel sank back to the ground beside me and rested his forehead against my shoulder, I was pretty sure the time had come to have a talk with him about imprinting.

 

And, in particular, about ours.

 

 


End file.
